School me on oscillators

[osbornkt]

Hey guys,

I'm working on an elementary design idea to build a Moog Taurus knockoff for myself.

I originally was going to build it as a MIDI controller, but I'd prefer to cook up an analog circuit for it...MIDI intimidates me

Would it make sense to use 555 or 556 timer chips to make a variety of stable tone/LFO oscillators, each one tuned to a different frequency? It seems like these are used a lot in simple drone boxes and similar things...The schematic I'm basing it off of is found here: http://www.beavisaudio.com/Library/555/555.htm (either the Astable osc. or the Basic 555 osc.)

I guess my primary concern would be does this seem like a practical way to do this? Would there need to be an individual oscillator tuned for each note, or is there a good way to make a stepped tone generator (maybe with a 556?) that could accurately trigger each chromatic note in a scale?

Advice and thoughts would be awesome!

[eatyourguitar]

I have seen people use an oscillator per button but it was a 40106 and only 4 of the 6 buttons used. it only makes square waves. pretty boring and basic. your better off using trimmers as voltage dividers or r2r ladder to send a CV and gate signal. then you can connect anything you want.

http://www.musicfromouterspace.com/analogsynth_new/SINGLEBUSSKEYBOARD2007/SINGLEBUSSKEYBOARD2007.php
mfos sells a PCB for this.

you can also do something with a diode matrix. kinda like charlie-plexing in reverse. sorry I don't have time to design it for you. if you try hard enough, you will figure it out. everything is available on the internet.

[smallsnd/bigsnd]

i actually went about making a bunch of boards for this exact project.
built everything up on perfboards (something like 5-6 total for all of the sections) and then that band got a bass player, rendering the project obsolete. i'll see if i can dig up my notes!

[osbornkt]

Thanks for that link! That looks like it would be a lot more interesting than the one I envisioned. Much appreciated.

[osbornkt]

i actually went about making a bunch of boards for this exact project.
built everything up on perfboards (something like 5-6 total for all of the sections) and then that band got a bass player, rendering the project obsolete. i'll see if i can dig up my notes!

That would be awesome! I'd love to see what you had