15 part series here.
via Thomas on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge
How it all began:
"I already played in a band back in my school days, and because I couldn’t afford a real guitar, I built one myself. It was built from a finger-board which I got from a broken travelling guitar found in the garbage, a body from flake board, with self-wired pickups.
We played songs from the Beatles, Stones, Spencer Davis Group and what else was heard on the radio in the 60s.
Later, during my studies (physical technology, from atomics through acoustics to electronics), I played the organ. (a Farfisa) Synthesizers were still unknown. At some point in ’70 I heard a song from Emerson Lake & Palmer on the radio and it totally struck me. I believe it was the song “Lucky Man” with that synth solo near the end. One must keep in mind that my ears had never before come to hear such a sound. From that day on I was a complete Emerson fan.
I immediately asked myself what kind of musical instrument this could be and also how such an instrument could function. Particularly the Portamento Effect pointed to the fact that it was an Oscillator which doesn’t have a fixed pitch (like with an organ), but is freely controllable.
Because I knew quite a lot already about transistors and the other components, I built a VCO, like I had in my mind. To control it, I built a Pitch-to-Voltage converter which generated a control voltage from the sounds of the organ and triggered the VCO..."
