Monday 25 August 2008

Bend Those Circuits

Lately, I've taken a liking to the art of circuit-bending.

Electronic music does have its madness, and circuit-bending is surely an example of that. This liberal form of art involves taking anything electronic that makes noise and screwing with it as best you can. Instead of physically bending circuits, you simply short them out until cool sounds appear. Now by cool, I mean really weird and sometimes just annoying. But even so, it's still fun. Here's a quick guide on circuit-bending.

Run downstairs and take a toy that makes noise, I have some from my childhood (a hot wheels RC car) Rip it open with a screwdriver, exposing the circuit board With the toy on, holy (or tape) down the button that makes noise, so that noise is constantly coming out of the speakers. With a piece of metal (of your finger) touch any two prongs together on the circuit board. Keep searching until one combination changes the noise (it took me about a minute) Congratulations, you have bent a circuit

Now bending can be much cooler than that, by adding knobs and switches, you can make some pretty cool effects. I have yet to try, but I hear the best results come from those small toy keyboards you can buy. Also, a speak and spell supposedly sounds epic. This guy completely tricked out his SnS and made it sounds really cool.



Anyway, just a weird form of art, now get bending!

Appropriately, I have chosen a track that relates to circuit bending. No, it is not a song created by bent circuit, but a song entitled "Short Circuit" by our favorite french robots. I know Daft Punk is popular, but hey, it's a funky song. This truly captures every point of filter house. It's funky as hell, and has some boomin bass. WARNING: This song may annoy some of you.



Bend it bitches,
Jordan

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks. I have now officially broken a tiny McDonald's toy in an attempt to circuit-bend.

Anonymous said...

Thanks. I have now officially broken a tiny McDonald's toy in an attempt to circuit-bend.

Jordan S said...

How did you manage to break it? lol All you have to do is unscrew some stuff.

Champiness said...

It was one of those weird Triangular-head screws. Plus, I had a hard time finding an appropriate toy in the first place.

Anonymous said...

I tried doing the exact same thing once. Triangle head screw, broke it. It was a little electric guitar thing with an American Idol logo on it.