I'm relatively new to electronics, and have no formal training other that what I picked up through my electrical engineer father. I solder well, can read schematics, have assembled kit projects with a rough understanding of how all the parts work, and know basic electrical terminology and principles. Ohm's law is about as far as my electical math skills go. Now I 'm reading some articles in this blog: http://www.apogeeweb.net/

So while this may seem like a very basic question to a more experienced and better trained person, please bear with me.

I spent a couple weeks messing around with some LEDs. I started by just hooking one up to my power source. Then, what happens when I add a resistor? What about a capacitor? what about resistors in parallel vs. series? From just playing with my breadboard, I now have an LED that blikcs randomly. Impressive? Nah...but I figured it out myself, and feel that I truly understand it.

Now, I want to design a synthesizer from scratch to give myself an understanding of how specific components affect sound. Starting from the most barebones circuit that can make a noise, I want to add a pot, then some capacitors, then some 555s...you get the idea. I just want to start with the basics and play around to see what happens.

Finding that circuit is proving to be quite difficult. I'm looking for a circuit more complex than hooking a speaker directly to a battery but less complex than http://www.musicfromouterspace.com 's Wacky Sound Generator (which, while simple compared to a real synth is still a lot more complex for me to truly understand what component A vs. compoent B does).

In essence, I want to find the sonic equivalent of Battery-to-Speaker and start playing with what can happen in between.

Electronics golf: what can produce sound with the minimal number of components?