Beginners' Curriculum

[R.G.]

Each year, this forum and others involved with electronics and especially amps and effects gets a pulse of beginners. Their first post generally goes "I'm new to [whatever] but I really want to learn about this. Can you tell me/point me/etc.?"

A lot of what is at Geofex is my ad hoc way of addressing similar issues, but they are, after all, ad hoc. The articles there were aimed at whomever was asking whatever question at the time, or probably more whatever my eccentric interests were at the moment.

Pointing beginners at FAQs helps a little, but does not by any means give them the quick start they need.

It occurred to me after only these few decades of doing this that what is needed is a real intro to electronics, but reformulated so that a beginner who for one reason or another has avoided math and science can be pointed to it and have it meet their needs. The content is pretty straightforward; it's what is in all basic electronics texts. But for one or another reason, the beginners have avoided those. Even when the online texts are pointed out, I can feel their electronic eyes glazing over.

Is it possible to do a better job? The greater community here was mostly non-technical people who have learned by reading and doing.
- what worked for you to learn?
- what stumbling blocks existed and how did you sidestep them?
- what would you advise for a generic beginner curriculum?

[Jaicen_solo]

Wow R.G, that's a question and a half for sure!

For me, you can throw as much theory as you like at me (and trust me, over the years there's been a lot!), but mostly it only sticks if I can apply it myself and see it working first hand.
For example, I really enjoyed your "Techology of..." series (more please), but the only one that I can really understand completely is the FF article, because i've gone through it, and worked through the examples you've given to see how they affect the sound. Likewise, most of the Univibe article was completely foreign to me till I built my Neovibe.

Stuff like Biasing transistors may seem simple, but it's easier to understand if you have a transistor in front of you to see how things work.

[Kearns892]

I used a lot of the information and articles over at Dano's site Beavisaudio when I first started getting into pedals because the info was geared towards building. The BBoard projects listed were invaluable to me when I first started providing a description, schematic, and detailed breadboard layout. Dano's images are always clear and well laid out (however, I remember do being frustrated finding several errors in his layouts). I would say that any beginners' curriculum would likewise have to be based around projects to attract a careful reading.

While I am by no means an expert, my prescribed curriculum would at its base be comprised of an array of simple "paint by number" type projects. This would include detailed perf, breadboard, and/or PCB layout with straightforward build notes coupled with a general building tips and procedures guide  so that anyone with no electronics experience could build hopefully build the project. This will teach a lot in an of itself.

For those slightly more curious, an additional page of mods could be attached to the project. These mods should also be fairly straightforward and theory free like "increase the value of R4 to increase overall gain," or "increase C1 for added bass". These will not teach as much as a detailed explanation of what is electrically going on with each of these mods, but will satisfy those who do not wish to tackle that level of reading while also creating an intuitive understanding of circuit building blocks and how they work.

For those feeling even braver the next section could include a breakdown similar to this thread http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=47572.0 for the circuit. What would be great is if this section also explained some of the theory behind the mods. However, to retain interest, the bottom line always needs to be how will this equation, this part value, etc. effect the sound or functionality of the circuit.

The next level would I suppose be the "technology of..." articles and could be linked to with other more detailed references at the end of the project page.

The bottom line is the adage, " you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink". In this community people will only learn only the amount they think they need/want for their individual goals and no more. The problem comes in when they find out they really do need more info. The idea here is present the info so that anyone, even those at the lowest level of kit building, will find the resource useful, then when they find out they need just a little more info it is already there for them.

Like Jaicen said, people will learn more by doing things than by reading an article on transistors because they are more engaged and are figuring things out and making connections on their own in a lot ways. If theory is presented in the context of a project people are interested in, they will see it at work and gain a qualitative understanding of the principles and then when they are ready can build on those with quantitative theory.

Now who wants to make a bunch of detailed project reports and build breakdowns for us  ?

[CynicalMan]

What would the object of such a course be? Effect construction and repair? Effect design? Effect modding and tweaking? Undestanding of how effects work? Each of those would need different material and emphases.

One thing I've been meaning to do for a while is to collect a cookbook of effect building blocks, with technical explanations. Gain stages, tone controls, clipping stages, LFOs, etc. All of the material is out there on the internet somewhere, but I think it would be useful to have the basics in one place to help out beginner modders and tweakers.

Simulators really helped me to understand effects, and I've put up some basic LTSpice circuits on my site to help people start out in it. That's a bit more advanced than a beginner class might need, but I think it could help.

Just thinking about what I use, these are the things I would include for a course on effect design:
- Basic parts and what they do
- Principles of circuits (What's voltage, what's current, what's ground, etc.)
- Ohm's law
- Voltage dividers
- More Ohm's law (can't get enough  )
- Simple filters
- How op amps work
- Basic op amp circuits with analyses
- How transistors work
- Basic transistor circuits and analyses
- Impedance and capacitive and inductive reactance
- Cookbook circuits with analyses
- Putting them together

Within these subjects, you could use breadboarding and spice for examples.


I'm willing to do some work on this. Circuit analyses, the cookbook stuff, or whatever's needed if this gets off the ground. Maybe a section in the wiki?

[Jaicen_solo]

I agree with most of the above.
The point I think I was really trying to make, is that I generally learn how one specific thing works, in order to accomplish a certain task. That's pretty much the way I learn most of these things.

[Keppy]

Personally, I haven't really been avoiding anything. The reason I haven't read a textbook yet is that they are all general-purpose, and I am interested in specific applications. For example, I can read a chapter on how bipolar transistors work, and spend hours trying to cram the information into my head in a way that makes sense, and then try to apply it to my specific situation. Or I can simply surf the forum threads discussing the use of transistors in whatever specific circuit I'm trying to build. In my example, I'm not avoiding study, but seeking specificity. I've gained a lot of technical knowledge this way, but it's a bit scattered (or, as you put it, ad hoc).

Lately, I've been struggling to understand some of the more technical aspects of what I'm doing, and perusing some of the more technically-oriented threads on this forum. I suspect as I move from building only existing circuits to designing my own I will seek out a more comprehensive understanding of the theory behind what we do. At that point, I will probably wish for a text that pulls examples from the low-voltage, small-signal applications that we're working with here.

- what worked for you to learn?

Ummm, cloning the Phase II?

- what stumbling blocks existed and how did you sidestep them?

Transistors, expecially FETs. I can sort of understand bipolars, though I'm not reflexive with the math yet (the "I hate math" thread is helping me there), but FETs are still a mystery to me. I've mostly built opamp circuits so far, and only used transistors in a paint-by-numbers kind of way. I'm also struggling to understand oscillators. I get how they work as far as the feedback increasing the output voltage until max, but understanding how they flip directions still eludes me. That might seem oddly specific, but there are so many circuits relying on oscillators that this has really confronted me almost at every turn. I mostly work from existing schems and datasheets at this point.

- what would you advise for a generic beginner curriculum?

I'm still a beginner, and still looking for help. The "generic" part bugs me though. There's plenty of that. I think what would be more helpful to folks like me is something targeted to effects. This might not be that different from a normal textbook curriculum, except in the examples it would use. For example, I'm currently working on a sinusoidal VCO for a ring modulator. I built it from the LM13600 datasheet, but that sheet calls for a 15v bipolar supply, and I'm using 9v bipolar. I know some of the values that I'll have to change, but not all. Then, since I'm using it for a ring modulator, I have to figure out what sort of gain stage to apply to the input signal and what transformers to use so that the two signals will combine appropriately. I think any curriculum needs to show how to adapt basic circuits (like from datasheets) to the signal levels, supply voltages and purposes common in building effects.

[Keppy]

One thing I've been meaning to do for a while is to collect a cookbook of effect building blocks, with technical explanations. Gain stages, tone controls, clipping stages, LFOs, etc. All of the material is out there on the internet somewhere, but I think it would be useful to have the basics in one place to help out beginner modders and tweakers.

This too! I would also request buffers, mixers, transformers, filters beyond the basic RC combo, and sinusoidal vs. triangular LFOs. I've been doing this for about six months, and all of this stuff is staring me in the face. I tend to find lots of basic info about distortion/gain circuits, and lots of more technical discussion of the rest that I struggle to follow.

[teemuk]

I think a main problem is that it's no easy or quick path, but many folks expect it should be, and that one should be provided for them.

I took a few courses on basic analog electronics and digital electronics, starting from a point of zero previous experience. Having a teacher who demonstrated and explained all the vital concepts is extremely effective.

After those courses it was pretty much self-learning, reading and studying several books of basic analog electronics, and on the side whatever I could find about matters of interest from Internet. Books should not be underestimated: I have few extremely basic ones about analog electroniccs in my bookshelf and they ALL explain everything from Kirchoff's and Ohms laws down to RC circuits, resonant circuits, transistors, FETs, OpAmps, filters and tone controls, amplifiers, basic gain stages, power supplies, oscillators, comparators and even digital circuits. Saying that information isn't compiled enough in one place is just BS. Read a good book; it's compiled there at least in an extent an amateur just starting out on this stuff needs to learn. ...And those were very simple, intermediate level books, not even comparable to something like the behemoth Art Of Electronics.

Learning the SPICE simulation helped extremely since I could simulate all the interesting circuits in computer - in oppose to spending ludicrous amounts of time in building them on breadboard and scoping and measuring about everything of them to find out what makes them tick.

Getting where I am now took several years and it's a constant path of learning and improving yourself. It doesn't happen in a day, in a week, or perhaps even in months. One must work hard, which unfortunately is a big problem for modern society that seems to want everything in an instant.

We can point out good books, FAQs, courses, whatever, but in the end the biggest problem is not the material but the person wanting to learn himself. If he doesn't put out effort then it's all in vain. There's no magic book they can read to learn everything in an eyeblink. This is stuff with learning curve.

I think the biggest hinderers in my learning process have been:

- Prejudices: It took me several years to get past ideas such as that solid-state is only crap technology, integrated circuits suck in comparison to discrete ones, caps and resistors can have significant tone, and so on. In this scene there's plenty of this stuff. Damn, why did I believe all that so long and din't listen to people telling otherwise sooner. I neglected plenty of great stuff due to prejudices that I after few years found out were nothing but extremely stupid and in the end just limiting my abilities.

- False information and misconceptions. Heck there's plenty of that in this scene too; Internet sites written by laymen can contain pretty much anything, for some extent even the textbooks. When you're a beginner in this field it's too easy to believe anything you read or hear because you lack the skills to question things.

A lot of this was stuff I didn't get by until actually just becoming bored to studying the same old same old. After taking a few glances to the stuff I had serious prejudices against just for the funof it I found out I actually needed to seriously adjust my thinking because my own experience proved a lot of the prejudices stupid and a lot of the generally accepted information to be myths and downright false. Was a good lesson about being more open minded and not believing everything that is written in this scene. Many guys who write that stuff can have a serious bias. Unfortunately, it's also something that has made me a bit paranoid: I no longer trust stuff before I have had a chance to verify it myself.

[HD Evans]

I've found the most difficult part of teaching any technical topic, assuming a non-technical audience, is remembering all the tricky stuff I now take for granted and finding a better way to explain it.  Since I wasn't a EE, the most advanced coursework on the topic I was required to take in college was circuit analysis.  The people I know who tinker with electronics successfully and never had a formal curriculum still put several years into learning enough to get the job done.  This often seems to be a matter of learning by getting shocked a few times and troubleshooting.  Eventually, all roads lead back to learning the math and science if real design work is what you're after.  Otherwise, for most I've always seen it as a matter of people worrying about "how" much more than "why."

Personally, I suggest using a practical approach to answer this practical question.  Perhaps what is needed is a small kit containing several PC boards and components.  Break each one down in a similar manner as your "technology of" articles.  I'm picturing a decent number of pots involved to demonstrate biasing, or perhaps showing the effect of cascading gain stages to produce a smoother overdrive than dumping it all in a single stage.  Perhaps a booby-trap laden project could be used to introduce troubleshooting.  The bottom line is that, if the goal is to reach people who intend to learn by doing...  The literature should be an organized form of the process.  With companies like small bear and GGG around, even learning to etch a PC board would be optional.  I've taught many people who benefited from learning a lot of basics by simply populating and soldering a board (how to identify, prepare, place, and solder various components.)   Again, how versus why is often the difference.

This is a good topic.  I've never seen a book or article that does what you're proposing very well.  My suspicion is that it's because they assumed the wrong audience.

[therecordingart]

I'm probably going to echo a lot of what has already been written.

I think most people want to jump in with both feet and learn along the way. The problem is you end up like me. I can etch boards, source parts, and build stuff, but up until recently I couldn't tell you why all of the parts do what they do. I've spent the past 8 years sourcing parts and building stuff with very little understanding beyond the basics. For the past 12 months I've been going through the AAS program that CIE offers and I'm now getting  the "Ah ha!" moments were things make sense. Still a lot of question marks, but I can look at circuits and figure out why things are the way they are.

Just thinking about what I use, these are the things I would include for a course on effect design:
- Basic parts and what they do
- Principles of circuits (What's voltage, what's current, what's ground, etc.)
- Ohm's law
- Voltage dividers
- More Ohm's law (can't get enough  )
- Simple filters
- How op amps work
- Basic op amp circuits with analyses
- How transistors work
- Basic transistor circuits and analyses
- Impedance and capacitive and inductive reactance
- Cookbook circuits with analyses
- Putting them together

Within these subjects, you could use breadboarding and spice for examples.

This sums up CIE's program. A LOT of reading and breadboarding.

[iccaros]

I Like the NEETS Modules.. http://jricher.com/NEETS/

I still get the updated Disk from the US Navy, I believe its a well rounded education, but may be too in-depth for some

[rockhorst]

One thing that I'm 'unhappy' with, is that I've gone through a couple of paint-by-numbers projects now, mainly boosters and ODs, and am not that much closer to understanding circuit DESIGN as when I started out...I know, from articles at Geo and AMZ, some modding basics. I can bread board, design a vero layout and probably cook something up by hooking different known tone shaping stages together. I get how filters work. The hard part is fully understanding the active components. I just can't get a hands on experience of designing with MOSETS, JFETs or bipolars. It just won't stick. Even after chewing trough the relevant chapters in The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill...They just use too much 'tongue in cheeck' writing for my taste. I just can't read between the lines.

I think it's pretty amazing that once in a while somebody like Rick Holt comes along and says 'oh by the way, here is a new chorus'...took a lot of design time probably, but still...understanding a circuit and designing one yourself are not the same thing.

[arawn]

I would have to say that after 4 years i am getting alot of things and I have ideas for designs. My problem is getting the math in a language I can understand. I mean i like toi think i am oretty smart but I failed algebra and so all of the higher maths tend to throw me, i guess because of the different logic involved. But yeah i would love to see more walk through of circuits and how the values were determined. 

[rockhorst]

Determining values is a good point, also for pots (for instance, some effects use a 10K for levels, most a 100k...). Breadboarding is a great learning tool for this I guess, but some more pointers would be nice.

[Puguglybonehead]

I definitely fall into the category of "assembler" rather than a true builder who understands what is happening in an entire circuit. Having the done the Ohms Law basics decades ago (Kirchoff's too, but never really comprehending it) I have found that "If you don't use it, you lose it." I have forgotten almost all.

I  can solder. I can follow a wiring diagram. I can use my multimeter. (a bit) I can build a boost pedal or a chip amp. I can understand basic, passive guitar wiring. Beyond that, I have been, as Kearns892 put it, using a "paint by number" approach.

I almost feel like I'm making some kind of a confession here, "Hi. My name is Pat and I'm a bonehead stompbox addict." 

Getting to the point of understanding a basic circuit, (a simple amp or an active filter or whatever) being able to do the math, breadboard it, know what to look for, testing voltages, etc. That is a point I would like to reach next. I really want to build some of the more complex effects sometime in the not-too-distant future, but I would really like to fully understand what I've already built.

[Earthscum]

I REALLY think that some kind of circuit that actually demonstrates the role current plays in biasing transistors. After you get the grasp of that, everything else would come a lot easier... it would define a good method for future knowledge gathering ventures. The voltage is the easy part to understand. You can see that on a volt meter using a voltage divider.

A beginner circuit like that would help reinforce Ohm's Law, get the worst hangup out of the way, teach impedances, basically all the NEEDED basics that can be taken to almost any circuit after that. Also, making the exercise reference the data sheets to get that part in there.

Just a thought.

[.Mike]

I think that most new folks are very goal-oriented. I doubt that anyone has found this site and thought to themselves, "that seems like the perfect hobby to consume most of my free time, much of my expendable income, and annoy my family with lengthy periods of electro-babble alternating with excessively annoying screeches and squeals." Most people, I think, start this hobby because they want to build something in particular.

Regardless of why people initially come here, it is important to have quick success. A high barrier for entry to the hobby discourages people. Knowledge is a necessity to get deep into this hobby, but it shouldn't be a necessity to dip your toes in the water.

To answer some of the original questions...

- what worked for you to learn?
- what stumbling blocks existed and how did you sidestep them?
- what would you advise for a generic beginner curriculum?

Sticking with my fast-success, easy-start theory, I did the beginner project. As a self-starter, it worked great for me. I think it could be improved to make it even easier for beginners. My point is, though, that once I built something, there was a huge increase in my willingness to invest the time and energy to do what we wish all beginners would do: read, learn, and think.

I think that the best piece of advice that can be given to a beginner is to forget whatever it is that you wanted to build that brought you here, and to build the beginner project. It conveniently also works for the advice givers as a gauge of the member's willingness to learn. If someone doesn't have enough patience to wait to build their whatever, success will probably not come easy. If someone chooses not to heed the advice of people who have been in their shoes, success will probably not come easy. It should be the first question we ask beginners who are looking to build a project that appears to be more complex than they can handle: Have you built the beginner project?

I wish it could be required building for help on more advanced projects. If you built the beginner project, chances are that you can debug your offboard wiring on your own, since you have already done it once before. You have confidence knowing that you have already had some success. You have the desire to do whatever it takes to fix the problem, even if it means reading, learning, and thinking.

I would love to see more Beginner Project style projects, each advancing in ability, and each prior project considered as a casual member-enforced prerequisite. Kind of like a School of Stomp(boxes)... or Stomp U... heh. I've thought about doing one but don't think I'm quite there yet.

Anyway, just my $0.02.

Mike

[phector2004]

- what worked for you to learn?
- what stumbling blocks existed and how did you sidestep them?
- what would you advise for a generic beginner curriculum?

Still learning, but:

1. Reading circuit analyses (Geofex articles, DIYSB, Beavis audio articles, other random circuit analyses) and trying things out in simulators and on the breadboard

2. Time  

No, really... and I'm just entering adulthood! Sidestepped this by staying up late and going to work/school tired

3. "How this can be used" components section... mostly how to use stuff in an audio setting. I've used diodes, transistors, relays, and 555 chips in high school, but that involved understanding the basic functions of the components. E.g. "Diodes let current through one direction only" versus a more useful applied knowledge "make the signal greater than the diode's forward voltage and shunt larger signal to ground"

Circuit module section: a lot of your "Technology of the..." articles have this, R.G., and I found these quite useful. Makes reading schematics much easier when you break everything up into little bits. And most DIY circuits have the same "modules" in them. E.g. Power filtering/polarity protection. Transistor + bias resistors. Tone stack. Phase shift unit. etc.

[PRR]

> what worked for you to learn?

Most folks here already learned something else.

What worked for you to learn guitar?

Paid lessons? Informal lessons? Pick at it?

How long did you study?

How good did you get? Not just "your music"; could you quickly play some other music and style? 

Would you go through that again to learn some other non-trivial skill, such as car-repair, medical tech, or audio-design?

[defaced]

Number one thing: Glossary (with diagrams/illustrations in simple normal people English, not full on engineering tech jargon).  It doesn't help someone to read a description and not know what they just read.  This was a great page when I first started working with tube amps a few years ago:

http://www.diystompboxes.com/wpress/?page_id=10

The basics are just that, the basics (Ohm's Law, biasing, etc).  But the one step before that, were you're so green you don't know what anything is, that's usually where texts fail.  I have run into this problem with microcontrollers.  The vocabulary is the hardest part.