“Think Like a Synth” Instructional Video Series by Anthony Marinelli – the Synth and Software Review

You might be surprised how much you still have to learn

The web is flooded with tutorial videos, articles, and product reviews that explain almost every aspect of using synthesizers. The challenge is to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and zero in on information that teaches what you need to know in an organized, progressive manner, so that what you learn today builds on what you learned yesterday. For many aspiring synthesists, the fastest way to learn is with paid tutorials. The effectiveness of such an education, of course, depends how much the instructor knows and his skill at communicating.
 
One of the most promising tutorial video series I’ve seen is Think Like a Synth, hosted by veteran studio synthesist and recording artist Anthony Marinelli. He’s best known for his contributions to tracks by Michael Jackson, Georgio Moroder, Kenny Loggins, and other luminaries. Marinelli has also composed numerous soundtracks for film, TV shows, and commercials. In addition, he has a YouTube channel that explores synth history and how to program electronic sounds from popular songs. And currently, this course is in a pilot program at Youngstown State University in Ohio, where he gets valuable feedback from the students.
 

Think Like a Synth is a series of 27 video lessons you watch in your browser, with a total runtime of just over 7-1/2 hours. You access them on the education platform Teachable by paying one-time fee of $449, which is currently discounted to $311.60. Sure, you can find synth tutorials on YouTube for free, but generally speaking, most of those are less focused and often less accurate than instruction by an experienced professional like Marinelli. I think you may find his expertise worth the cost.
 
Step-by-step instruction
I began my education in synthesizers decades ago on the ARP 2600, which I still consider an ideal instrument for learning the basics and beyond. Marinelli apparently agrees, because every lesson revolves around that classic synth. By exploring every slider, function, and parameter, he introduces the essential elements that apply to all synthesizers, especially analog synths.

 
When you open Think Like a Synth, all the lessons are listed in the left column. You don’t need to watch the videos in any particular order. If you continue a lesson at a later time, the video recalls where you left off. Joining Marinelli in all the videos is his sidekick Dante, who asks questions and reinforces various points. I found his presence distracting at times, but he does help make the lessons more conversational.
 
Each topic has its own lesson page with a video player embedded near the top. Below that are a lesson description, a few relevant facts and tips, a homework assignment, and a quiz to test what you’ve learned. Some lessons suggest ear-training exercises too. The facts and tips are doubly useful, because they point to locations on the video where each topic is discussed.
 
After the course introduction, you begin five lessons that explain oscillators, including tuning, waveforms, pulse-width modulation, and noise. The lesson on waveforms suggests which ones work best for emulating various instruments. Although the only waveforms mentioned are sawtooth, pulse, triangle, and sine, Marinelli’s description of pulse width is excellent. When he discusses the harmonic content of waveforms, though, it would have been helpful if he’d explained the overtone series.
 
The 16 minutes spent on tuning are probably more than you need (especially if your synth is digital). Still, he has some useful tips for tuning analog oscillators you’re unlikely to find elsewhere.
 
The lessons on lowpass filters and various ways you can modulate them is quite thorough. He briefly mentions other types of filters, but I was disappointed he never describes highpass, bandpass, or band-reject filters. He does, however, tell you how to produce vocal-like formants by modulating a lowpass filter with an audio oscillator. Block diagrams of patches he’s creating are often overlaid onscreen to illustrate how he’s connecting various modules.
 
In the belly of the beast
The next few lessons cover ADSR envelopes, gates, and why single triggering can be more expressive than multiple triggering. Marinelli offers some useful ideas about inverting envelopes too. Following those is a lesson on VCAs and how you can use them with envelope generators to control not just loudness, but also the depth of modulation signals.
 

Next up is modulation, where he discusses LFOs, clocks, sample & hold, and vibrato. His description of a clock is as a rhythmic series of triggers or gates produced by a low-frequency oscillator or sample-and-hold to trigger events in a periodic way. He demonstrates how to use clocks to simulate step sequencing, produce stereo panning, and trigger an electronic switch that alternates between two sounds. One of the lessons I found most interesting explained how to use the 2600’s preamp to overdrive the signal from an LFO to create new waveshapes for modulation.
 
The next lesson gives you a general understanding and close-up views of the role of control voltage in an analog synth. Marinelli barely mentions MIDI because, he told me, it isn’t essential to programming a synthesizer. He plans to cover additional topics in at least three more lessons he’ll add to this course and in future courses.
 
The lesson on tremolo offers some creative ideas about modulating loudness I’d never considered before. Remaining lessons cover topics most useful if you own either a modular synthesizer or a hardware 2600. They cover the ring modulator, multiples, lag processor, envelope follower, mixer, and output section.
 
I think, therefore I synthesize
Although you can’t know synths if you don’t learn the jargon, Marinelli’s approach is almost equal parts musical and technical – a refreshing change from most materials for learning synthesizers.
 
Will this course give you a comprehensive education in all kinds of synthesis? Of course not. Will it give you a relatively thorough, practical understanding of how most synthesizers work? Yes, I think so, if you take what you’re learning seriously.
 
It’s even helpful for veteran synthesists who want a refresher course to fill in gaps in their knowledge. No matter how well you know synthesizers, I bet you’ll learn things you’ve forgotten or never knew.
 
It’s obvious that synths don’t have thoughts, but Think Like a Synth really can help you approach sound design with a deeper understanding of the timbre-building resources a synth makes available. It’s also obvious that Marinelli knows his stuff and is very good at getting it across. Although he concentrates exclusively on the ARP 2600, you can apply most of what you’ll learn to any synth, especially if it’s subtractive. If you do own a 2600, whether it’s the original ARP, a Korg re-release, a clone like the Behringer 2600, or even a software emulation (such as the Korg Arp 2600, which I reviewed last year), this course is the best educational series I’ve seen for getting an in-depth grasp of that instrument.
 
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