I've been into synths for a long time but only relatively recently got into West Coast synthesis - I was intrigued by the fact that there was a completely diffe

I've been into synths for a long time but only relatively recently got into West Coast synthesis - I was intrigued by the fact that there was a completely different paradigm out there. I quickly started reading about Buchla and Serge, then tried the Ripplemaker iOS app and finally purchased an Erica Pico 3. I really enjoy West Coast sounds, they are different from ordinary subtractive sounds, they can be a bit "cold" sometimes but if you strike the right balance you get crisp tones, you can create percussive sounds using the natural "pluckiness" of the vactrols and you can get really wild with waveshaping/FM. Besides Morton Subotnick, some artists that have used Buchla and Serge synthesizers are Suzanne Ciani, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Alessandro Cortini. Edit: another interesting aspect is the fact that Buchla and Serge synths contained ideas that influenced later synths like the Yamaha DX7 and the Casio CZ101 (and today, many successful contemporary synths are also based on those ideas). Often articles about the history of synthesis declare that "East Coast synthesis won" but that's not really the case.