By Matt Sotlar / The Jambar

Youngstown State University’s Dana School of Music began its Think Like a Synth program at the start of the spring semester.

Think Like a Synth is a program created by Anthony Marinelli, an award-winning synthesizer programmer, who has worked with artists such as Michael Jackson, Kenny Loggins and Supertramp.

In December 2024, Marinelli launched his Think Like a Synth program, a 27-lesson course in programming and using analog synthesizers. At the beginning of the semester, YSU adopted the program for students in the Dana School of Music.

Marinelli said that YSU bought synthesizers and is working with synth-based plugin services.

“The university purchased several synthesizers,” Marinelli said. “You have two of those, and then a company called Cherry Audio has supplied the students with free plugins, virtual synths. So there’s some support behind it.”

Think Like a Synth meets weekly from 2-5 p.m. in Room 3000 in Bliss Hall. The program is taught by YSU music professor Daniel Keown.

Keown said that the program is not yet an official class.

“[The program is] not in our banner system, but it’s kind of like an extracurricular course that the students have committed to, and we’ve started piloting what would it look like if we took this course and embedded it within a live, in-person classroom setting,” Keown said.

Currently, 14 students are enrolled in the program, where they learn how to operate synths using Marinelli’s program to present a final project at the end of the semester.

Keown said that while the program is reserved for music-based majors, he hopes to expand the program for students of all majors.

“The idea of offering another course like this somewhere in the future isn’t out of the question,” Keown said. “We’d love to see offering another course, maybe in the future, for all YSU students. It could be really cool if we could get students in engineering, nursing or business that have an interest in synths.”

Marinelli added that public interest in synthesizer-based music is constantly expanding.

“A lot of people hated it — they thought it was an aberration,” Marinelli said. “It’s bigger than ever now, and now, everybody can do it and be a part of music, and it’s made people want to learn acoustic instruments too. I think it’s really brought a lot of people into music.”

Students interested in Think Like a Synth can contact Keown at dkeown@ysu.edu.