@alisynthesis
Late to this, but an extra thought... If someone doesn't have any musical experience or skill, synths with keyboards or a 303 type interface are not at all immediately accessible, and they can also be very difficult for people with motor disabilities.

A semi-modular with a simple sequencer like an sq-1 might suit some people. As others have suggested, little devices like the Monotrons can be fun. Pity the Monotribe is no longer in production :(

No-input mixing, effects pedals?

@alisynthesis@io.waxandleather.com having thinked about this whole area for a day or so now, I think it’d be wonderful if there were a way to have reel to reel tape, and splicing tape and a razor blade to edit it with. I used to do exactly this in the 70s in Australia, I had a couple of old mono valve reel to reels that I got from junk shops for almost nothing, and spent a lot of time being creative with tape. The trouble is, that’s just not an option these days, to try to go back to those days would be ludicrously expensive and ultimately pointless. Maybe looping is close to this, but it's not tactile and hands-on, but I suppose that’s what we have now.

@alisynthesis The Stylophone might be just what you're looking for.

@alisynthesis
Samplers: EMU esi-32. Manual was two sides of A4 IIRC
Synths: SH-101, Juno 60, Juno 106 are all very accessible IMHO.
Drum machines: TR808 and TR909 (think about all the DJs that bought one)
DAW: Sony Acid had to be the most basically obvious tool I ever saw.

@alisynthesis My first synthesizer was a Roland SH-101 and while it helped to know a bit about filters and ADSR envelopes, I really didn’t know much, and but there were a limited number of controls and they were all exposed as hardware knobs or sliders, so I mostly learned just by moving things around and finding out what it did to the sound

If software is of interest, I really like Bebot for iOS or android from http://www.normalware.com – getting started is as easy as wiggling a finger around on a screen and making the little animated robot sing, but it’s also actually a fairly capable, precise, and expressive instrument if you dive a little further into the settings

@alisynthesis maybe the critter and guitari pocket piano or organelle? they're very simple instruments (just a keyboard and a few knobs) but they make very fun sounds and are easy to play with

@alisynthesis Looking around the studio and thinking of my childs first go on some of these: Juno-106 (or similar), Korg Monologue (echoing @tsrono) Korg Volcas (thinking the Sample here)...

@alisynthesis a three-knob delay (no tap tempo or note-division whatevers), an echoplex if one is handy.

@alisynthesis Lyra-8 would likely meet the brief of making sounds without much knowledge of traditional synth programming or check out Mononoke on iPhone for similar in software if on a budget: https://somasynths.com/lyra-organismic-synthesizer/

@alisynthesis instantly easy https://dato.mu/

@alisynthesis You're getting all the good recommendations I'd make, so I'll ask a question: what is this for? Are you teaching a class or workshop?

@alisynthesis it takes a little bit of assembly, but a guitar pickup connected to an amplifier is really interesting even without any strings. you can put smartphones and whatever other electronics on it and explore what the electromagnetic waves sound like

@alisynthesis so the OG synths were expensive but there are cheap clones about.
The minimoog is so brilliantly designed in this regard. Very much an instrument. Very immediate. I think this is why it was so successful

& while not quite as accessible the pro one is kind of instant fun too

@alisynthesis The "Atari Punk Console", originally called the "Stepped Tone Generator" by Forrest Mims, can make all kinds of interesting and strange sounds with just two knobs. I made one as a kid and had lots of fun with it until eventually wires got disconnected from the breadboard. It took me many years to figure out the right words to search for online before finding the schematic and building another one.

Just want to say a huge, all-caps THANK YOU to everyone who has responded so far. There are so many great ideas in this thread that absolutely would not have occurred to me. <333

@alisynthesis @BorrisInABox it's a bit pricey for a starter instrument but the Suzuki Omnichord is pretty simple to pick up and play. There are some cheaper variations and software emulators out now so you can get an idea of what it can do. https://www.omnichord-heaven.com/

@alisynthesis It's not self contained, but people seem to be drawn to my MIDIKalimba MIDI controller.

Of course, it got the most attention when I had it controlling not just a synth, but a MIDI->DMX converter and a bank of colored lights as well.

https://peacockmedia.software/kalimba/

@alisynthesis old TR style drum machine, no menuing, quick to figure it.

@alisynthesis This is literally exactly how I got into synthesizers, with the Realistic Concertmate MG-1. To this day I don't think I've ever seen a manual.

@alisynthesis I don’t now if this is simple enough but Akai mpk mini has built in speaker and battery. Has keyboard and drum pad

@alisynthesis props to the Minibrute and Microbrute for being solid dead simple fun to use analog synths that kicked off an era of budget synths.

@alisynthesis Lots of great suggestions on here, Ill add the Novation Bass Station II. It has nicely outlined sections for the components and is a bunch of fun to use. Monophonic and analog, so it doesnt get too deep. Also relatively inexpensive.

@alisynthesis I've always enjoyed the drum brute/ drum brute impact. It's very easy to learn and very fun to play in a jam

@alisynthesis Otamatone maybe.

Kinda like a thermin-junior.

@alisynthesis

Simple to understand, or simple to get sound out of while glossing over what you don't understand?

if the former then you can't beat a very simple modular, ie 1 VCO, 1 VCF, 1 VCA and a EG. almost anything easier to start on than that is hiding something which then makes it harder to understand.

it could be prepatched to a standard signal flow. then when they unplug something and it stops working that's a clue.

also a theremin is super simple to understand what it does and how to use it even though it's hard to play and the underlying tech is a bit subtle the UI is super transparent (literally)

TAL noisemaker is a pretty straightforward plugin synth with not much hidden, and free.

there's loads of other hardware and software monosynths that don't hide very much.

it might depend if labeling of controls and a few simple instructions are allowed.

EDIT wrote this before seeing that you are not teaching synthesis, from which I infer that understanding is not a goal, in which case I don't know - though theremin still stands.

@alisynthesis Roland TR-8S drum machine is pretty intuitive. There's some really deep menu-divey stuff but you can do loads without worrying much about that.

@alisynthesis

Novation Circuit was the easiest and most fun make-music-now box I've ever played with. More and more I regret selling it.

@alisynthesis maybe the modal craft? it’s a wavetabler, which might not be my first teaching choice as far as synthesis techniques, but from a ‘turn knobs to change sound’ perspective, i feel like that part could be figured out later down the line; can largely treat it as a virtual analog. for a tiny synth, it’s got dedicated knobs for the filter cut/res and for the adsr eg, which is stuff i think is important to grasp early & not have to fuss around with to learn.

@alisynthesis@io.waxandleather.com I’m honestly not sure there is. At least nothing modern and available as new. I grew up with 60/70s synths in the 60/70s, with much time enjoyably spent on complicated stuff.

Now I’m in my mid 60s I really haven’t got the patience for depth in a thing, I don’t like hidden features, I can’t remember stuff that was there last time but isn’t now, and can’t tolerate buttons that say one thing but most of the time do something else (looking at you Roland SH4d), and most of all, I’m not amused by obligate depthy menus.

What would light up my eyes and prick up my ears would be a good synth that is truly one knob per function, has no shift modes, no alternate situations, no daft secret-handshake user-interfaces that I can’t remember next time I use it many months later (looking at you, Novation Circuit).

What I’ve always relied on in a synth back in the 70s/80s/90s was to be able to look at the panel, see the knob settings, know what kind of sound it was going to make (which I could), and not be surprised when I pressed a note on it and got roughly that sound. You simply can’t do that these days. That’s what’s lacking today.

Even in the 70s, a straightforward synth could fox users - the amount of ARP 2600s or ARP Odysseys (2800) that got sent back as faulty because it wouldn’t shut up, because the user turned the ‘Initial Gain’ slider up from zero.

Of all the synths I’ve ever had, the most foolproof, most user-friendly, most ‘makes a sound no matter what you set the knobs and switches to’ synth is the old Roland SH-09 I had. But even the SH-101-like modern issues have a load of extra complexity in the shape of sequencers, arpeggiators, that sort of thing.