Welsh's Synthesizer Cookbook teaches a 102-patch recipe method for systematic voice design on analog synthesizers

Welsh’s Synthesizer Cookbook is organized around 102 named patch ‘recipes’ — each describing an instrument voice (strings, bass, brass, etc.) in terms of oscillator waveform, filter cutoff, resonance, and ADSR settings. This recipe method treats synthesis as a parameterized craft: given a target sound category, look up the canonical parameter ranges and adjust from there. The companion GitHub repo (cookbook-sc) implements the cookbook’s foundational chapters (oscillators, filters, envelopes) as runnable SuperCollider figures, allowing a programmer to hear each concept as code rather than as front-panel knob settings. The repo is explicitly a proxy for the un-hostable Welsh PDF.

Examples

A ‘strings’ patch recipe from Welsh might specify: Sawtooth wave, LPF at 2kHz, resonance low, attack 80ms, decay 200ms, sustain 70%, release 500ms. The SuperCollider equivalent is a SynthDef instantiating these parameters with named controls.

Assessment

Using the concepts from the repo’s oscillator and filter chapters, write a SuperCollider SynthDef for a bass synthesizer voice: sawtooth wave, resonant LPF with envelope-controlled cutoff, and an ADSR amplitude envelope. Name the controls and set reasonable defaults.