Circuit bent intruments

[sonicalienz]

Anybody using circuit bending to affect their sound?

sonicalienz
http://www.dubcollective.co.uk/sonicalienz/

[Meffy]

Heh... I used to do this with old radios and tape decks back in the mid-1960s... didn't have a name for it, and my noises were exceedingly unmusical. :-) Haven't done any circuit bending since it became a "thing" though.

Not deliberately, that is.

Meffy

P.S.: Wow, my 1500th post! Who's that knocking at the door? ... It's ED MCMAHON! With a huge check! *swoon*

[ouroboros]

'yep. Beware, it's addictive. Mostly for electronic sounding stuff though - can't get much natural sound out

Trying to find a bullhorn I saw once that had different f/x to route sound through.

I will say though, that many of the circuit bending musicians, well, they make a lot of noise to my ears. Hard to make music, but of course, a very subjective opinion.

[sonicalienz]

[quote="Meffy"]Heh... I used to do this with old radios and tape decks back in the mid-1960s... quote]

wow vintage stuff!

I'd love to hear it. Any mp3?

[sonicalienz]

I had a go at making a virtual circuit bent speak and spell:
http://www.dubcollective.co.uk/sonicalienz/vst.htm

[willum]

I had been wanting to try circuit bending for quite some time, so a little while ago I dropped by my local thrift shop in search of suitable electronic devices. I don't know if it was just that day, but the selection was overwhelming. I picked up two Casio mini keyboard things, a cheesy kids' toy, and a Radio Shack "DJ" thing with percussion pads, keyboard, and a turntable thing. I took apart one of the Casios, took out the keyboard and reassembled it. This enabled me to get at the circuitry. I then went about short-circuiting various points with mixed results. The most interesting thing I could get it to do was crash, producing some very odd variations of the preprogrammed songs, and some even more odd emanations I cannot explain. Other crashes seemed to access various parts of the ROM that were not exposed on the panel of that particular unit (different songs, more complex versions of some of the songs). I haven't hard-wired anything yet because I'm a lazy fool. I did get some great samples out of it, some of which were promptly loaded into Symptohm Melohman with great results. I rewired the kids' toy, replacing a few resistors with potentiometers near their range, and a momentary switch across a couple of points. I was able to make it change the speed of playback, and "freeze" using the momentary. Sort of interesting for a while. I haven't cracked open the other units because I'd like to improve my skills a bit. So there's my circuit bending experience.

[ugo]

i havent done any circuit bent effects but i did bend an old casio SK-5. it was a lot of fun to do. (though i somehow managed to light one potentiometer on fire. ) one of these days i'll bend something else...perhaps something with basic midi implimentation so i can use it in sequencing.

here's an mp3 of the casio...4 minutes of circuit bent weirdness. i recorded myself tweaking the knobs for while then spliced the best sounds/loops/glitches together into this file. believe it or not, nearly everything you hear was with the SK-5 set to its built in piano sample.

bent casio.mp3

-ugo

[ouroboros]

(though i somehow managed to light one potentiometer on fire. )
-ugo

Awesome!

[snooky]

how do you actually bend circuits!?


Good choon btw ugo

[ugo]

(though i somehow managed to light one potentiometer on fire. )
-ugo

Awesome!

yeah, i used to do a lot of woodworking and some sawdust got into one of the old pots i was using during the bending. i guess i must have hooked up the pot to something on the board that was recieving a lot of power from the batteries becuase the sucker lit up. of course i didnt have any water around either...just lots of other flamable things. so i went running up stairs to the sink with the flaming pot in my pliers. after that, for the rest of my bending experiements, i made sure i had a clean bench and water near by.

by the way...to anyone thats thinking of trying circuit bending...ONLY bend with battery power. DO NOT try doing this with a device thats plugged in to the wall. a mistake could result in injury or cause you to develop a perminant medical condition known as death.

-ugo

[snooky]

(though i somehow managed to light one potentiometer on fire. )
-ugo

Awesome!

by the way...to anyone thats thinking of trying circuit bending...ONLY bend with battery power. DO NOT try doing this with a device thats plugged in to the wall. a mistake could result in injury or cause you to develop a perminant medical condition known as death.

-ugo

yeah , i was wondering about that...BTW, there are cures for death...

[ugo]

how do you actually bend circuits!?

its the term for the not so fine art of short circuiting something...in our case, things that generate sound. here's a link to a great site on it.
http://www.anti-theory.com/soundart/circuitbend/

Good choon btw ugo

-ugo

[Meffy]

wow vintage stuff! :)

I'd love to hear it. Any mp3?

Ohhhh dear! I wish. No, at the time the tape recorder I was using to make honks and squeaks and buzzes and parps... was my only piece of recording equipment. :-D

I was a mere kit in they days, knee-high to a married grasshopper. Nowadays I solder mostly to make or repair audio cables. O, Atlantis!

Meffy

[rockstar_not]

I had an Ensoniq ESQ-1 that if I left it sitting on the Ultimate stand (you know the one, the Kraftwerk looking thing from the mid-late '80's) it would 'bend' itself, producing at times what sounded like a flock of geese flying overhead, having just huffed some helium gas.

To correct it, I had to grab it by the sides and lift it up. I would hear some 'settling' sounds coming from inside the keyboard, and then the geese were gone.

-Scott

[Meffy]

Some day I've got to tell the story of the carbon-rods-and-water output power resistor on the FM rig I ran at school one year... we could tune the power of the transmitter by watching how fast the water boiled...

But not today.

Meffy