Simple 555 Based Drone Synth

Today I have another very simple breadboard project based around the 555 timer. I’ve built three 555 astable oscillators similar to what I used in my 555 Serial Oscillator Project. This time however instead of connecting the oscillators in series I have run their square wave outputs through a simple mixer onto a single audio channel. This is known as a drone synthesizer.

As you can see from the schematic this drone synth is a fairly straightforward build. If you are familiar with 555 oscillators you probably recognize the layout of the 555 chips as a basic astable oscillator almost directly out of the 555’s datasheet. Once the three oscillators were created I added a 1K ohm resistor to the output of each (pin 3) and connected these outputs together. Once the three outputs are connected you can run this through a large capacitor (I used 330 uf) and out through your output jack. It is also possible to connect this circuit directly to a speaker though the audio level may be a bit low without amplification.

Once you’ve built this circuit you can begin experimenting with it. Pin 5 on the 555 chip can be used as a control voltage input so you could easily add a method of control voltage to this circuit. The easiest way to do this would be to build three more 555 oscillators and connect their outputs to pin 5 of the 555 chips in your drone synth. These will function as basic LFOs and modulate the frequency of the drone’s oscillators. You could also experiment with other voltage controls like a sequencer or keyboard. You could also replace one or more of the potentiometers with things like photo-resistors or body contacts to make the project even more interesting.

Lastly I wanted to mention that this drone synth is not limited to three oscillators. You can add as many 555 oscillators as you want in parallel to make an even deeper and stranger sound. If you’re interested in seeing the extreme of this a YouTube user by the name of Look Mum No Computer recently built a 100 Oscillator Drone that is definitely worth checking out.