Circuit Bent Instruments
From Reed Ghazala's oddmusic pages:
Circuit-bending is the electronic art of the implementation of the creative audio short-circuit. This renegade path of electrons represents a catalytic force capable of exploding new experimental musical forms forward at a velocity previously unknown.
Here are a few musical instruments I made by modifying used children's electronic toys, otherwise known as circuit-bending. I was introduced to the concept by my friend Josh Lambert from the band The Octopus Project.
I've just started playing with some open source hardware like arduino and I'm thinking about working on some new projects soon.
- The Futar
- Modified Casio SK-1
- UFO
- Vocaid
Electronic "guitar" with two distortion patches and volume meter added.
Listen to Sample
Casio Sk-1 sampling keyboard with 5 built-in bend switches and two Atari 2600 joystick ports added- ports can be used to attatch joysticks, keypads or a patchbay with 17 connections.
Listen to a Sample
Toy with rotary dial of pitch-shifts.
Listen to a Sample
The Vocaid was a device made by Texas Instruments (creators of the Speak&Spell) for use by people with speech or communicative impairments. This model has been altered to add two glitch effects and several stage switches to access the various memory banks of words and phrases. There is also a limited pitch shift knob.
I have made some various recordings with these instruments. You can listen to them here.