Yes or a DSI Mono Evolver and a good pair of monitors
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Keep away from the P12, in this regard its a monster.
Good reads about the synthesis is the virus bible: (applicable to all synth more or less.)
http://www.infekted.org/virus/files/HowardScarr-VirusTutorial-ProgrammingAnalogueSynths.pdf
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The computer music tutorial
By Curtis Roads
For me it was understanding and learning how waveforms work, what they are, and how acoustic instrument waveforms look and behave. When you see the waveform for a trumpet, then go into a synth and make a brass patch with the intention of making it sound like a trumpet, it really teaches you deeply about waveforms, base frequencies, harmonics, and even envelopes. This also helps a lot with sound design in general and even working with samples etc.
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I got an MS20 mini and tweaked knobs for about two weeks until it made sense
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I jumped down this rabbit hole quite unprepared and started with a Korg MS20/MS50 combination and a good book with theoretical and practical explanations about synthesis of this kind of synthesizers. And I believed that a synthesizer was supposed to create every kind of sound, which human kind can imagine.
Well … this lead to the realisation … after some time … that I was completely wrong … and to a long lasting love for a world of electronic instruments and sounds and music creation methods.
There are so many options since the first electronic instruments had been developed and there is nothing like the one and only machine or method that my advice would be, start with “subtractive synthesis”, because it’s the most often used form of synthesis, which, I guess, must have some reason 
Get yourself a synth, listen to the “one-knob-per-function” advice, one ore more books, quality information from the internet (there have been named many sources already) and be open to learn and learn and learn …
And never forget … have fun and make music 
I think after years struggling to program my Virus, I had a Nord Lead A1 for about three weeks and it opened my eyes to synthesis. They are really simple to program with lots of shortcuts. I then found myself going, ok I can make that bass sound real easy with the A1, let me try that the long way with the Virus. I then started to uncover a lot of stuff I had previously looked over with the Virus.
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https://rhordijk.home.xs4all.nl/G2Pages/
Rob Hordijk’s Synthesis Workshops - aimed at Nord G2 Modular but not specific to it, covers a lot of universal synthesis topics.
P.S.: I’ve compiled a PDF of Rob’s workshops for my private use. Let me know via PM if you would be insterested in it
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my korg poly 800 gave me my initial introduction to synthesis, that was in 1992 or so
Hello.
I think the first thing to do is to understand terms at first like in human body what’s the name of the different organs and what’s is the purpose of each one.
For that I think Rob Papen’s Book is nice, How to make noise series from Simon Cann is nice, (but there’s plenty) An interesting learn by practice with Syntorial is also a very good starting point. (I do recommend for that one to avoid headphones and learn on monitors because when it’s come to reverb and pan you will probably failed by small amount of errors with headphone it’s really hard in small adjustment to hear the differences)
When you understand the building blocs and different synthesis types. I would recommend to start by family and understand what’s make a Pad different from a Bass etc… and write somewhere a startup configuration for each one that way you can always start by these characteristics each time you want to design a particular patch.
Then I would start to listening presets on various VST, Gear… and Reverse Engineering those patch you really like.
Then I would try to recreate some very distinctive sounds you remember from old tracks or fresh one you discover from just released tracks with all you’ve already learn.
To me : When you start to learn a very vast area like Sound Synthesis you really need to cut the process in small parts, think the cuts regarding what is interesting or important to YOU and YOUR GOALS… We need to be efficient otherwise you can practice, learn and experiment everything without to produce something at some point. And of course what’s the point of taking years to learn something if you don’t produce something at some point.
Be careful with the hunger of learning ! it can be very addictive because it’s of course very interesting, but a musician need to understand he’s not a scientist… he really need to find his place and spend his time smartly.
and :
find a balance between knowledge/technical aquisition and productivity in his art
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Syntorial is a great point to start, it is interactive so you internalize the lessons much better than reading, and your ear will rapidily learn to recognize what is going on in a synth sound. Highly recommended.
It’s fun to follow this forum. Users post a video and ask how to make a specific synth sound. If you see a reply then you can try to reproduce on your own synth.
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a lot of good input here.
i learned synthesis mostly by learning programming languages like pd/ max msp, supercollider and kyma and a lot of experimentation. but i think its not important wich “language” you learn but to have a deep interest in how things work: to read papers, docs, watch tutorials, visit workshops, seminars – whatever helps to get into it. and of course to experiment, even without knowing what you doing on a specific synthesiser. analysing parameter settings if you like them
and get back into the books if you think you need a deeper insight…
it really depends on how deep you want to get into synthesis and if you are willing to use time that you would normally use to make music to think about music or even better to developing tools to make music.
if you want to stick with the computer as an instrument i recommend learning pure data and read this two synthesis tutorials (optionally supported by two beers):
for pure data (open source software):
http://www.pd-tutorial.com/english/index.html
for max map:
https://docs.cycling74.com/max5/tutorials/msp-tut/mspindex.html
just as a beginning…
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I can’t possibly cite a moment when it all feel into place. It was more of a cummulative process.
I think I truly learned it when I got into modular. I had a lot of synths before that as well, and knew how to operate them and get the sounds I wanted, but even more so now. I’ve just recently re-bought the A4, and I’m getting so much more out of it, simply because I understand the architecture and signal flow better this time.
Having said that, there are millions of ways to synthesize (especially with a modular), so still a long way to go. 
I would say downloading pure data would be a good starting point. Making patches with basic structures really makes it clear how synthesis works, given that we’re talking about subtractive and additive synthesis
I’ve found some of Nick Batt’s Sonic Lab reviews to be quite good for illustrating the odd bit of patch design. Occasionally he makes a patch and I’m “ah, of course”. I think watching someone step through creating something from an init patch can be quite instructive. Mylar Melodies’ videos are good for that too.
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I think the Korg Monotribe was responsible for my first real “aHa!” synth moments.
I was deep in Ableton and messing with the very frustrating native instruments for my first electronic year/s. Then I got hardware curious and went nuts. Monotribe helped me learn the most and allowed for deeper explorations elsewhere.
So, not recommending monotribe is right for you… Just saying any simple synth that gets you ‘hands-on’ experience is really all it takes.
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Just see Syntorial added New Lessons for SERUM (XFer) Added to the VST lessons
Cool, isn’t it ?