Meet the designer: The Stitch Synth by Jessica Stanley https://class.textile-academy.org/2019/jessica.stanley/ bit.ly/synth-fabricademy

Stitch Synth is an e-textile, modular, analogue synthesizer, which is a complicated way of saying that it is a collection of electronic circuits that make sound. Hard circuit boards are replaced with fabrics, and wires and resistors are replaced with conductive threads and fabrics. It is a research project on e-textile circuits and soft interfaces for using electronics to create sounds. Playing Stitch Synth is easy too! Snap the modules together, plug it into a speaker, and touch / press / pull the sensors to make different sounds.

Stitch Synth is motivated by the hidden history of women in electronics and electronic music. It draws on the potential for e-textiles to develop new ways of making electronic circuits, and creates new ways to interact with them.

With no computers, no coding, and not even a microcontroller, all the sounds are generated by logic chips (aka CMOS ICs) working in combination with capacitors and resistors. In the documentation of the project you can learn and understand how this actually works. The documentation includes circuit diagrams, and links to more in-depth resources on the circuits that make it all work. There are loads of ways to add, change, adapt Stitch Synth. This project allows you to PLAY / MAKE / LEARN / HACK.

You can make your own Stitch Synth too! Access to tools - like a laser cutter, embroidery machine, and a soldering iron - will help, but you can also make some or even all of the modules of this project without using these tools.