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(You're getting this email because you either subscribed to my newsletter or, through the folks at Alpenglow Industries, added your email to a giveaway raffle that one of my synth kits was a part of. Hello!)
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Exciting announcement time:
I'm joining the workshop instructor crew at Dogbotic next month to teach one of their sections of DIY Synthesizers for the Electronically Unacquainted!
Every week for nine weeks, we'll build a new circuit that extends on previous work, starting with a blinking LED and ending with, uh, something more complex and noisier. We'll make oscillators and filters, sequencers and amplifiers, all kinds of fun stuff. And it'll all be done without programming or soldering: just a breadboard and a smattering of antiquated pre-computer tech that was never, ever intended for audio synthesis. You don't need to know anything about electronics or even music to take this workshop; it is for everyone. Trust me, it will make you feel (and look!) like a mad scientist.
The curriculum will be similar to the other instructors' sections but with the added unsolicited tangents and context that only a startup-software-engineer-turned-barely-profitable-hardware-entrepreneur could provide, like:
- What makes something valuable? What's the difference between art and product?
- Why does making things make us feel good? And is it different when those things do things? (I don't have answers but do have opinions!)
- How does an object's audience inform its design? Does it change when it's for engineers vs educators vs consumers? (ie: practical industrial design)
- What even are a computer(s)? (I do not know, sorry.)
I'd argue that making machines is more accessible now than it's ever been before. And making machines that make art and are art themselves? Incredible.
If that sounds of interest to you or someone you love, please do check it out. My section is on Saturdays and runs January 7th thru March 4th, once a week for two hours each. I'd love to have some Oskitone folks in my camp. Sessions are virtual over Zoom and all materials are provided.
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About Dogbotic: I met Dogbotic in 2019. They're a super small audio studio, also in the SF Bay Area, that does composition work for famous artists you know and puts on really incredible sound-related workshops — I've taken two of them and loved both. I sing Dogbotic's praises, unabashedly and incessantly.
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Hmmm, what else is new
 You haven't heard much from me this year because I've been busy preparing to be and now working hard to be the very best dad in the whole wide world! I'm probably not World's Best Dad mug yet, but I'm easily in the top 500,000,000.
I've spent most of my life making stuff and he is, hands down, my absolute favorite creation.
So, yeah, no new Oskitone products to announce but I am still shipping orders every weekday and walking them to the post office myself, usually with the babe in tow.
As an excuse for us to get out, I've discounted the remainder of these DIP8 shirts to $10 until stock runs out. I won't make any money but still want you to buy them! (Plenty of Scout and POLY555 kits still in stock too, of course.)
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That's it! Hope y'all have a good holiday and a happy new year. Please take care of yourselves and the people you love.
Yours truly,
Tommy from Oskitone
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