About the website

Originally, i hosted a synthesizer page on my personal site, as part of the assorted garbage pile it was at the time (it's a more sorted pile now). I tried re-implementing it after a full renewal of that homepage, but i failed. Being a programmer, i overcomplicated things, and made a javascript engine to parse custom format text files and media into a neatly laid-out page, instead of actually making articles about my synth modules. So it became a stub, and i ditched it, too - until realizing that a synth website should be as simple and "web 1.0" as possible. This realization came to me after i visited some Japanese synth blogs and homepages (gotta love the japanese web simplicity), as well as revisiting the famous netarchive dump of Ken Stone's CGS pages. They are all simple and usable! And so, i decided that i should make a simple and usable page with plain html/css instead of clouding mine (and everybody else's) mind with complex design and javascript loaders - the former belongs to my homepage, and the latter has fairly limited usability anyways.

At first, i thought of hosting it using the same host my friend and i used for our demo sharing service made for friends, but then i realized that i'm paying Neocities whole $5 a month, so why not to use its multiple subdomain capability?So i put the page on here. 'SFCS' means SynthFox Custom Stuff, and it was the first meaningful four-letter subdomain that wasn't occupied. Guess i could've thought of something cooler, but now we gotta stick with it i guess!

Finally, since it's a whole separate webpage now, it feels a bit spacier, and i feel more comfortable making a bunch of pages for beginners, or for just some general handy information! Which is cool - a lot of people ask me how to get into DIY synthesizers, and i always have to explain everything all over and over again. Now, i am able to just make articles on that, and direct them here. Lots of love for SDIY newcomers!

About me

Hello again! My name's Aubery Lis and i mainly go by my scenic nickname Astro, yet i also go by a bunch of other names (Lis, Patch, Kate and some more). I am not tall, have long fair hair and grey-green-blue eyes. I was born and grew up in Russia, even though now i am studying in Estonia. I am somewhat around 25 years old (won't be updating the bio for a while so this will do for like, 4 more years!), though i always feel 16 inside. I am non-binary, but somewhat girl shaped - preferred pronouns are 'they' or 'she'. I make music and synthesizers. I also code, and have a knack for visual design, and drawing. I love udon noodles, pizza and mint candy a lot. I'm a relatively calm and absolutely friendly person, and am alawys up for some chit-chat, so get to me through contacts down below if you wish!

I have been interested in computers and synthesizers since childhood. I also always have been a very rhythmic person. The intersection of the two is likely the reason i started trying to audio gear aimed at rave music at about 15 years old. At first, i tried building a MIDI sequencer with arduino. Of course i failed and it never worked. At about that same age, i started making music on a DMG-01 gameboy using LSDJ, and watching videos of magical bleep bloop machines called "modular synthesizers". They have been a huge mystey to me back then! For about a year and a half i was "playing modular synths on youtube" - and also reading a hell ton of articles on modulars and synthesis in general.

For a while afterwards, i thought about making my own modular synth. I finally decided to bite the bullet and do it when i was 17. I made my first rack, and the PSU blew up. The construction of the whole device was crappier than ever, so I made another rack, and it was a bit better. Repurposed an old ATX computer power supply, put some banana jacks into it, plugged it into the rack's power input bananas and tested it on my two modules: the Atari Punk Console that i built, and a Polivoks VCF by a local DIY person and chiptuner, Uoki-Toki. And, of course, my Gameboy with LSDJ. Everything worked, but soon enough i messed up the PSU yet again by testing a new module and short-circuiting it. ATX PSUs blow up really loudly! Later, me and my friend made a new PSU by online schematics - a classic linear bipolar psu. A step sequencer and some other modules followed. Stuff was progressing! At that same point, i was already running Elysian Tunes - a fake label with all the projects being just me. I started incorporating some recordings of my newly built stuff into my music. All the fun i had with a step sequencer, an atari punk console, a polivoks vcf and the monotron delay - sometimes, i lament the magical simplicity of those times.

I continued SDIYing remakes and enhanced versions of very basic uncopyrighted circuits from the web. Eventually, i introduced myself to CD40XX logic chip insanity and made my biggest project of the time - the Everything Machine. Of course, it couldn't actually do everything, but it was a relatively big panel crammed with banana jacks on a 2x2 cm grid, with a load of CD40XX logic under the hood. I recorded a whole album on it and - despite sounding samish - i still find it quite cool. Ironically, i learned about Lunetta synths and realized i just made a lunetta panel only a year after finishing it. by 2017, I released a few factory-grade Eurorack modules - a dual square VCO, a shift register, a "data sequencer", and a slew+comparator. I got noticed by the synth community of my hometown, and was very proud they were inviting me to my first synth fests and cons - Art-Aura, and then Synthposium. Those events motivated me to make more modules and other musical stuff and keep progressing in the field.

However, i entered a hiatus instead: too hyped about my ideas, i ordered a whole LOAD of pcbs of my designs to make an entire line of new modules. I only had money left for parts for those, and after buying and testing, i found all designs had loads of unfixable tiny mistakes. Extremely depressed and upset with myself, i decided not to give up, but definitely to recharge and get better at this before trying to enter the 'serious' scene again. So i dropped out into making custom stuff just for myself and researching both practical and theoretical sides of electronics for sound. The result of that time is the CrapRack prototype system that is proudly sitting on top of the site's index page, as well as the entirety of the SFP series.

I only started to slowly rise from my grave as a commercially available module maker by 2021. By then, i estimated myself knowledgeable enough to try releasing modules for people to get once again. I revived SYNTHFOX as a brand, and released my first module, SLEDGEHAMMER - a fancy and reengineered take on SFP01. Although i did have fair knowledge of some theory and strictly SDIY pracitce, i was lacking practical knowledge of proper PCB design, part selection, etc, etc - all of this came naturally as i made more and more commercially available designs.

As of 2024, i live in Estonia, have finished my studies, became a teacher at the Estonian Arts Academy and in TalTech. I established the brand of SYNTHFOX, releaseing a whole bunch of designs, some getting a bit of traction in the community. I am constantly designing and making new prototypes for my SynthFoxPaperface system, meaning new improved SYNTHFOX designs! Getting sick of Eurorack by now, i also thought out most details of my own format, Function-Unit (F~UN), and soon will switch to making modules for it, too.

I hope you got to know me a bit via this textwall, as well as understood why i made this site at all a bit better. If you have any suggestions, questions, found some typos or website bugs - don't hesitate to write to my SFCS e-mail:

sfcs@auberylis.moe

or use any other contact method listed on this page of my personal website. Have fun browsing my website!

Lots of love to dafont user ClaudeP for the header font Pistilli Roman!