Hey!
I was directed here from instagram.
My question was regarding courses or areas to explore as you’ve come into building these pedals. I have a good foundation of electronics from a tinkering perspective and have worked with arduino and teensy. I built a cool percussion instrument with teensy that triggers solenoids via midi. On the Kinotone instagram there was a computer that seemed to be testing the circuit board of the Ribbons pedals…I was wondering where to begin looking into audio type electronic development (forgive my lack of proper terms)
Thanks! Stoked to get my ribbons soon 
Hi there,
I can share some resources that have been helpful to me over the years.
I started with a degree in electrical & computer engineering and worked for many years as an engineer before starting Kinotone, so that gave me a very solid foundation. I’m mostly self-taught though and I think anyone can do what I do with enough tenacity.
- Electronics fundamentals – Aaron Lanterman from Georgia Tech is a wonderful teacher and his free courses on YouTube are a great starting point. He often uses examples from music products to illustrate why certain circuits are useful. After that, check out Aaron’s course on Electronics for Music Synthesis. There’s a lot of overlap between analog synthesizers and pedals, especially in the digitally controlled analog department. Electrosmash can also be a great resource for learning about pedal circuits. Once you have a basic foundation, Doug Self’s book Small Signal Audio Design is an essential read. To put things into practice, Google the schematics for some of your favorite products and see if you can figure out how the circuits work from input to output.
- Learn a circuit board layout software – I learned Autodesk EAGLE back when it was free. It’s since been discontinued and you have to pay for the new version (Fusion 360 Electronics). Maybe there’s a free version - not sure. It seems like the open-source world mostly uses KiCad now. If I were starting over I’d probably use KiCad.
- Embedded Systems – Fast-bit embedded brain’s online courses for ARM processors on Udemy will take you from zero to hero in microcontrollers. I wasn’t great at programming microcontrollers in C/C++ until I took all those courses. Don’t use Arduino or libraries (like Teensy or libDaisy)—they might give you quick gratification, but they abstract away critical details and prevent you from actually learning how microcontrollers work.
- Learn a mechanical design software and 3D printing – This is super helpful for designing enclosures and front panels. It’s so nice when you order your circuit boards and they fit perfectly in the enclosure on the first try.
- Soldering – I don’t know how to teach this. Maybe watch a few YouTube tutorials and start practicing. Always use lead-free solder and be careful about fumes—they’re very bad for you.
- DSP – Read books by Curtis Roads (The Computer Music Tutorial), Will Pirkle, Udo Zölzer, and Eric Tarr.
- Simulation and automated testing – I use Python a lot. It’s used during end-of-line testing to communicate with the device, collect data from test equipment, perform calibration, etc. We also use it for DSP simulation with SciPy and matplotlib—no need for MATLAB!
My final piece of advice is this: you can’t do all this stuff at once. Your mind is like a single-core processor; it can only truly focus on one thing at a time. Make a goal (e.g., “I want to make a DSP pedal platform”), break it down into tasks, and tackle them one by one. It might take years, but if it’s something you really want, that’s just what it takes. There are no shortcuts.
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I really appreciate you taking the time to throw us some resources and knowledge. I received my Ribbons a couple of weeks ago and it’s bonkers! Such a cool pedal! Thank you!!