There are many ways to approach the synths. Books and tutorials often do this methodically - waves, harmonics, modulation, etc. This is the way to learn the mec

There are many ways to approach the synths. Books and tutorials often do this methodically - waves, harmonics, modulation, etc. This is the way to learn the mechanics of the sound synthesis and ideally should let one figure out how to design 'new' sounds. However, a lot of musicians prefer the practical way of using synths by getting familiar with the presets which often accompany the synths. Sure, someone had to design those presets somehow. Well, it's also possible to learn that from these presets created by the pros. Meanwhile for the purposes of music production the presets could be tweaked to better blend with the intended soundscape. So the question is what's the driving reasons for getting into synths. As for the resources, there's a nice collection of vintage synths emulators - Bristol https://sourceforge.net/projects/bristol/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/bristol/ Bristol runs on Linux, and supports MIDI. The filters are not very true to original hardware, but good enough for synth explorers. Also there's a nice set of original manuals that were accompanying the classic ARP synths. They give a theory intro and then detail the presets, mostly how to synthesize acoustic instruments. There's also a dub of ARP Odyssey original audio tapes by Roger Powell which follow the construction of the described patches https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu2JwwG3bjA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu2JwwG3bjA