Books about Synthesis and electronic Music Production

Free Books and Websites

• Brian Eno's oblique Strategies - for when you're stuck in a rut
• The Book of bad Ideas - a compilation of Synthesizer tricks from the Muffwiggler Forum
• Sound On Sound Synth Secrets - a 63 part series of articles that explore sound and synthesis in great detail. This is a must read!
• Patch Ideas for Doepfer Systems - while not in book or article format, this website has so many interesting patch ideas that it makes it an invaluable resource.
• The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music - This book by Miller Puckette, the inventor of Pure Data and later Max/MSP, is full of important theory and ideas for sound design, even though it's targeted at the computer program Pd.
• Computational Music Synthesis - is another deep dive into the theory and mathematics of sound and synthesis.
• Musical Applications of Microprocessors - a work from 1985 by Hal Chamberlin,
• Learn Music with Synthesizers - although from 1974, this book is a great resource for beginners and more advanced synthesists.
• Music beyond Airports - appraising ambient music - a collection of articles about ambient music, what it is, who's doing it and how to do it "right"(?)
• 12k principles for minimal, ambient music - 12 short principles that are worth meditating over to maybe incorporating into your approach to making music
• Composing with Tape Recorders - a book about Musique Concrete by Terence Dwyer

Other Books

• Patch & Tweak - a very nice "coffe table" book chock full of tips and ideas mostly on how to create sound with various Eurorack modules
• Arduino for Musicians - exploring the world of DSP programming on the Arduino