Circuit Bending and Synth building blog for beginners and pros alike. Featuring Circuit Bending resources that include: Tips, images, audio, and video. The lowdown on my new instruments, Glitch art, Minimalist ideas, electronic music, etc.
Google Ads in it's infinite wisdom suggested to me the Spectra Symbol company, which lets design custom membrane switches and potentiometers. DIY synth and Circuit bending implications of these pads and switches are countless, especially when used with a microcontroller. No costs are mentioned on the website, my guess is that it can be expensive, but they do offer free samples. I ordered some so we'll see what happens.
DynamoGenesis posted a pic of his new 10 step sequencer on LiveJournal. The circuit uses a 4017 decade counter IC with some small variations. A 555 clock oscillator is still needed to keep the sequence from going haywire as seen in the video, but I think its kind of cool to have random notes like this. This unit is going to be sold on eBay very soon, we'll see what it brings.
The jump from circuit bending to synth building seemed to have worked very well for Mikmo. This Modular system utilizes various circuits described on MFOS website for the final build. No sound samples just yet, however more information on making panels and etching PCBs is available though the link.
Another JVC video mixer has been glitchafied by Karl Klomp. Luckily for us, there are many good pictures to show off the insides of the breakout box and the mixer IC connections. Most of the bends are intended for Audio to Wipe interactions however it is also possible to send the mixer into a chaotic video glitch frenzy. Karl mentiones that extreme glitches tend to crash fairly often, however there are many models of mixers which could be more stable. A great overview video along with other output videos can be viewed to get a better idea of what the mixer does.
I missed this Rack Mounted Casio SK-1 first time around on the Electri-Fire website, however Phil quickly forwarded that back to me. The SK-1 is controlled by a MIDI module from Highly_Liquid and the joystick on the switch panel is from Bent-Tronics shop. No sound samples or videos yet, however there are some good tips on getting the power switch rewired and installing a soft reset.
Zabranalogic based in City of Lima Peru, has been selling handmade gear at very reasonable
prices. Of course the shipping may be quite a bit extra, but $120 for a bunch of knobs and switches to create strange sounds with is not bad. The 2 employee company also sells guitar effects and does mods on factory pedals like increasing delay time and changing the gain. I really dig the plexi glass look and the designs of their pedals are very. I guess a full fledged synth is on the way also. Big Thanks to Jim for the link.
Circuit Bending stores seem to be popping up like mushrooms here and there. In the free trade economy it can only mean one thing for the consumer, lower prices. The guys from Get Bent Circuit Bending Supply store emailed me to say that their doors are now open. There are some nice deals on switches and other parts, however better deals are of course on eBay. As a nice bonus, limited prints of various circuit bent instruments are also sold as well as some one-off deals on interesting looking cases and toys. What impressed me the most however was the actual eCommerse site that is hosting this store. Its called www.ecrater.com and anyone can open a store there to sell what ever they wish for free. Brilliant! The interface is simple, clean, supports paypal, and does Froogle Listings.
This short clip of (e)-BOMBERS performing in Japan was found though the Bend2005+- festival link on Bend or Die. In it several guys who are wearing PVC type PA systems with various gear making noises and glitches.
Kaseo sent me a great video demo of how powerful and fun a pitch bend can be, even on the most simple toys. This Pikachu mod consists of touch contacts and a pitch knob. Sometimes it is hard to find a potentiometer that is of a high enough value to create a super stretched out crawl. However touch contacts can be used to achieve a complete break as well. Enjoy.
Here is a schematic promised for a very long time. 4 Oscillator circuit based on the 4093 Quad Shmitt Trigger IC. I have used identical circuits in the GameBoy Theremin Synth and the Atari Joystick Synth. There is not much to creating an oscillator. In this case 1uF electrolytic capacitors was placed between the input pin and the ground. Also the Optical resistor from the output pin of each individual gate back to the same input pin as the cap, this creates the feedback
needed for oscillation. For this project a 0k to 200k photoresistor worked fairly well, 0 to 15k would work but not as many low frequencies, more upper range, this can be countered with a 10uf cap of needed. The signals from each oscillator are mixed by diodes in the direction of the output. If this is not there and the outputs are just soldered together, the circuit will not work. This solution has huge limitations and drawbacks, because certain frequencies are louder then others. An optimal solution is to use a Quad Op-amp to do the mixing. This IC will run on a 9Volt battery with all the ground connections made to the Vss Pin 7. The +9 goes to the Vdd pin 14. The schematic assumes proper power applied to the IC. The free input pins can be used for touch controls and or inputs from the other oscillators. Once each individual oscillator is built, various output to input combinations can be tried. Good luck and let me know if I messed something up.
Qubais Reed Ghazala, father of circuit bending, has posted a flickr set on the OddMusic list showing many details of his Tape Canvas device, conceived independently from the Nam June Paik's Random Access created in early 60s. The instrument functions by having segments of tape stretched out on a board next to each other, played by a tape head extracted from the tape player. The movement can be across those segments in all directions at various speeds: fast, slow, or sideways is sure to produce interesting sound combinations. The possibilities do not stop with tape, floppy disks and VHS tapes can also be attempted with this setup. No sounds or videos that I can tell, but if someone knows more info please comment.
Update: Ghazala's responce to Paik's comparison.
 ghazala@anti-theory.com |
Radio Shack CEO has resigned amid questions of whether he graduated college or not. This could not have come at a better time for the Rat Shack considering that their low earnings are forcing the closure of 700 stores nation wide. Now this is not a huge problem for me, however for some people who live in areas where the only part source is the Radio Shack this may be devastating. To all of us this can also spell out Huge Sale Look Out! Now if someone finds the list of closing stores please forward that to me stat! Otherwise just go into a store and ask the employees if they are going to be laid off and watch for reactions.
RCA Voice recorders are fairly cheap and readily available. The one I used for this project was an RP5007 I believe, purchased for $5.00 at a second hand store. The bends implemented on this unit were all short circuiting of the Smart Media card slot. This was pretty much the only place that I could solder wire to as well. Of course there is no room for switches inside case, so external breakout box was used and all the wires were fed back through the opening in the case. The recorder itself was then super glued pretty hard to the project box. The sounds are pretty intense, lots of cool glitch loops, robotic sounds, and general Speak and Spell like glitches. I did record a video of the device being messed around with and there is an extensive gallery detailing the construction. Enjoy.
Just want to let everyone know, that GetLofi.com server is having some hardware issues. Currently it is running on a quick fix, however if it does go down. Don't panic, we will be back soon.
The incredible Highly_Liquid MT-240 is almost up, on eBay. The sound sample is wild and craftsmanship looks perfect. Rivets seem to be in right now as well. The box is actually marketed as an individual product called GlitchDesk and can be purchased for $99 from Highly_Liquid's website. An interesting feature of the desk is the ability to extract audio signals from the internal circuitry. This can be done with just about any memory chips and processor circuits. The result may be a quite complicated square wave.
I guess the International Noise Conference is going on in Miami right now, Feb 16th through 19th. The only Noise conference from previous years I was able to dig up was this one and it didn't look very noisy to me. So if anyone goes, please let me know and send some photos.
The very cheap switches from Hong Kong Super Seller have just received an upgrade. My latest batch arrived the other day and as you can see in the photos, the solder terminals of the right switch contain red resin substance the base. My guess is that this will prevent the certain degree of melting found in the previous models of switches ( on the left ). In my experience wires had to be soldered carefuly and everything was fine, but this is a welcome improvement at no extra cost to us! Great...
This fairly new bending site seems to have quite a few very neat closeup shots of circuit boards, various toys, and some interesting comments on bending experiences. My favorite part however is this CoolTronix TunaFish Keyboard picture. These are still available for purchase on various eCommerce Sites. Funny thing is that I have a shower radio that looks just like this keyboard, same everything. One thing for sure, this TunaFish would be very tasty with a 555 oscillator mod.
"You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish."
I found the reference to Peter Vogel through Karl Klomp's website which I will post more on very soon. However I feel that this is worth noting because Peter Vogel's sculptures are complete and interactive audio circuits. In this closeup it appears that the circuits are transistor based oscillators with a resistor feedback. Sounds simple enough, but getting everything connected point to point like that it is a bit of a challenge and an art form in itself. I would imagine that these individual circuits produce simple oscillations and they may also be patched together for cross modulation. There may also be some time based performance factor designed into the circuit, however that is hard for me to say because I have only read the descriptions and not actually seen one in real life. Comments?
The sounds of a simple 555 LFO patched to a pitch resistor of just about any black blob toy can be mind bending for sure. This particular Hasbro PS-625 Xylophone does have a lot of cool animal sounds, which sound super rad pitched way down. However something that this device does not have is lots of room on the inside. So an external breakout box with knobs and a coiled cord was attached. The cord is a standard telephone headset cord, unfortunately it only has 4 conductors. 2 were used for power and the other 2 for leads to a pitch resistor located on the backside of the board. A 1 Meg Ohm pot was used for the pitch control and the output of a 555 circuit is patched to that with a switch. The photoresistor can be switched off and on to replace one of the pots in the circuit for optical control over the LFO frequency. The other switches on control Ramp vs. Square wave as well as capacitor substitutions for Low and High oscillations of the 555. This toy does seem to crash hard once in a while to the point of battery removal , so a simple reset switch was added to short the + and - of the battery leads together for a full reset. Once again, more build photos are in the GetLofi Gallery and the video is available for enjoyment.
Yet another variation on the 4093 oscillator design, this one uses 4 directions of the stick for patching the outputs from off to on. The pitch of each oscillator is controlled by a knob and can be adjusted in realtime of course. The patching is not as easy as it seems because the resistors in the circuit can't be switched in and out, instead I am basically switching the 1uF capacitors to the ground in order to engage the oscillators. In other words, since all the 1.0 uF capacitors in the circuit run to the ground, the joystick common was set to ground and the capacitor minus leads were soldered to the directional pins on the port. The fire button patches another 10uF capacitor in the circuit to one of the oscillators, creating a drastic pitch change. Quite a few shots of the insides and the building process are available on GetLofi gallery. The last image is also a video link, sounds good for such a simple circuit, especially once the delay kicks in.
A so called Multi-Plexer is currently up for grabs on eBay. Apparently the circuit was designed in the 70s and only a few units were sold recently. This sound sample is very Sci-Fi almost like a very deep tremolo effect with some slap back reverb. Apparently any sound source can be processed with this box. The auction description mentions an analog signal sent around in a circle and the result being a product of heavy manipulations. It seems like this can almost be a ring modulator with an LFO, but if anyone has info please do comment.
For those who do not already read the Nuts and Volts magazine, I suggest that now is a good time to start. Because the January issue featured an article by Thomas Henry who is a DIY synth guru with many articles on the matter. This article is a primer to analog synths with a basic guide to the essential elements like: VCAs, VCOs, VCFs, etc. There are only a couple of gripes that I can remember about this writeup. One of them was the 3 aspects of sound being: Frequency, Amplitude, and Harmonic content. I do believe that duration or the length of the sound is also an important aspect, making it the forth. However I am not even close to being an authority on synths like Thomas Henry, so I can be wrong on this. The second was an incorrect referencing of Wendy Carlos as W****r Carlos and pigeon holing Switched on Bach as the "Most Amazing" piece of music made with an analog synth, not leaving much room for exploration there. All in all felt that the article was well worth the price as a keep sake in my synth information collection. I would also suggest exploring the vast ftp resources of the Nuts and Volts website which contain previous Thomas Henry articles such as MIDI-to-Synth Interface and Building a tunable Noise generator. Enjoy.
While on the subject of Gameboys here is more info on the latest opto-theremin I custom built. This time I was able to score a complete intact system with the screen protector. Of course the first step was to discard the guts, for later use :-) This version was kept as stock looking as possible. Existing buttons were drilled and glued in place to house photo resistors. Select and Start buttons have surface mount switches behind them for sound muting of the left and right channels. The headphone jack assembly was left intact and with the filter stage utilized. Dot Matrix Screen was replaced with a holographic sticker on the back side. Few more images can be also found in the Gallery section of the site and of course a quick video of the theremin being played is available for viewing. Enjoy.
Kaseo of Japan recently posted his SK-8 with a GameBoy break-out box to the Benders list. Looks clean and I dig the photos with nice professional shadows and such. The trigger buttons on the Gameboy are linked back with a DIN connector to the drum sample buttons on the SK-8 allowing for great solos, if needed. There are also glitch switches installed in the main unit and the sample mp3s suggest that those are effecting the drums. I can see the looks of chip-tune scene peoples' when someone up on stage starts mashing buttons on a game boy while hearing sample sounds. Original Gameboy does make for a nice breakout box and synth enclosure, but I am torn by destroying something that survived over 2 decades of use. However the fact that there were over 120 Million sold pretty much says that there are plenty to go around. So check the eBay.
**Update**
Here is the Video of the keyboard being played. Thanks. Kaseo.
Pete from CasperElectronics has sent me this diagram explaining how to get a keyboard interface attached to the Speak and Spell for controlling the pitch. From the drawing it looks like the keys are pressing on tiny buttons allowing for resistance specified by the trimmer pots to be substituted. One thing to note is the fact that this device was build for Danny Elfman, the composer of Simpsons and other well known themes.
This is a relatively old and interesting looking model of a circuit bent Casio SK-1. The auction description mentions it being purchased two years ago, however the exact bend date is unknown. Not a very typical mod because I hardly ever see the numerical keypad installed on the SK-1s, usually patch bay and or toggles. This also features a joystick connecting to a DB-9 port on the front, my guess an off brand Atari spray painted. Its a shame that the person broke it during the move, or so it says. Never to less it would be interesting to see what this sells for.
This brochure came with the VideoPainter I recently purchased. Interestingly enough there are a few models of things that I did not know about, like the Mickey Mouse Video Painter and a slew of talking Whiz Kid Toys. I hope someone finds this helpful and or fun to look at. Please note, images are fairly high-res, but the colors are off.
With the help of my guru friend I have recovered the old Getlofi.com index. So thank god links are saved. Some changes will take place with the template soon. Until everything is setup, hang tite. Also I suppose any suggestions about the website features and the main page are welcome, during this process, so let me know. --CM
Emm, if the page does not look like it normaly does, please be patient. Someone somewhere screwed up my settings so things got lost. I'm getting everything back to normal very soon, with a few minor changes and updates.
Well I just got my painter in the mail and quickly proceeded to take it apart. The images can be found in the VTech Video Painter Gallery of what the insides look like. From using this device normally I was very impressed by its capabilities. Its an 8-bit artist Mecca sort of speak, especially when using the zoom function to magnify those lines. On the inside I found a Z80 processor same as the TRS-80. There also appears to be a ROM IC which I imagine can be messed with. However my concern is that because its a fairly complicated device it may crash a lot with any attempts of bending or short circuiting. I guess we just have to wait and see.
From time to time the TI Vocaids show up on eBay, but have not actually seen one bent. This video clearly shows Willy Wiggins who claims not to be a musician playing the device with some awesome delay effects. The unit only has 2 glitches and somewhat limited pitch range knob. Extra switches at the top provide rom selection so the inserts do not have to be swapped. Enjoy.
First of all you have to have a circuit to bend it, otherwise its Data bending, but not according to this Make:Blog post containing nothing about a Circuit Bent a Atari 2600 contrary to its heading. Instead it links to a port of Stella emulator in Jitter that can assign MAX/MSP controls based on different pixel parameters, in theory. To me that does not constitute a Circuit-Bent creation as much as it proves the power of high level programming languages and the creativity of people who use them. I may be splitting hairs here, but I suggest the editors of Make:Blog, whom I admire, start reading GetLoFi.com to learn more about the concept. Oh wait....they already do :-)
