Circuit Bent synths

[cosmos]

anyone have experiance with those homemade circuit bent synths/ modded casio's ? i find them very intresting and different from whats out there, i defenitely want to try one of these ...

there are many on ebay, for example:

Circuit bent Hing Hon EK-001 squarewave synth - 11 mods - eBay (item 260344596847 end time Jan-19-09 15:02:03 PST)

Circuit-Bent Casio Sk-1 with LFO +photo theremin - eBay (item 310114818882 end time Jan-17-09 13:10:10 PST)

any of GS members have any and can recommend for a sick one?

thumbsup

[cosmos]

Circuit Bent Speak & Spell, Read (2-pack) by FASTMATT - eBay (item 360095517810 end time Feb-03-09 09:02:15 PST)

Circuit-Bent Alesis HR-16 MIDI drum machine glitch beat - eBay (item 310114820298 end time Jan-17-09 13:16:10 PST)

Circuit Bent Casio MT 240 Ambient Glitch Synthesizer - eBay (item 160299480922 end time Jan-17-09 06:16:31 PST)

[sashbash]

check out:
Circuitbenders - Custom built electronic audio insanity machines

used them before, they do some fun stuff.

[cosmos]

Originally Posted by sashbash

check out:
Circuitbenders - Custom built electronic audio insanity machines

used them before, they do some fun stuff.

aa ha .. thank.

[cosmos]

yeap, they look (and sound) very cool, they are also very cheap. i know Simon Posford uses 2 of them, OTT as well. you can hear it in OTT's latest album.

[CircusofMind]

I bent a speak n spell and love it. I would highly recommend doing your own. You learn a lot and can modify it exactly how your want it. I also bent a furby which is fun but more random. I would never buy one that someone else did because it is so easy to do oneself.

Check out the book by Reed Ghazala

Amazon.com: Circuit-Bending: Build Your Own Alien Instruments (ExtremeTech): Reed Ghazala: Books

or the one by Nicolas Collins

Amazon.com: Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking: Nicolas Collins: Books

[tribeofenki]

Casio Sk-1 with LFO

diabolic devices are well known...

[W-W-Int]

i never liked bent sk-1's.
all they do is take something extremely useful and make it extremely flaky. if you want randomness they aren't very random at all. they only do like 3 glitched sounds which you could get simply with bit crushing effects and a regular synth or granular synthesis slowed down.

the sk-1 is a nice little toy sampler. unbent it's far more useful for weird noises and effects. especially if you get ahold of the old nikelodeon "mega mouth warper". it's a vocoder / robotociser / pitch,gender changer toy with a teloscoping horn. it's like a hand held bullhorn and vocoder put together. just set it to robot and place over the speaker of the sk-1 and hit it's trigger button and play the sk-1. much better than a circuit bend, and far less glitched.

the only circuit bent toy that i've ever run across that the bending yielded better results than the original is the speak 'n math. those get very musical when bent, unbent they suck.

[kreeper_6]

The only circuit bent toy that I've ever run across, where the bending yielded better results than the original was a "Jack Rabbit".

[robd]

Bending it yourself is usually a better bet. That said I bought a really nice circuit bent Pikachu toy at a record store in Tokyo for some friends of mine back in the states. Stuff from the '80s tends to bend btter than more recent stuff, because they had all the functions in different places on the board back then. Around the early '90s, ICs got sophisticated and chap enough that most of the cheap toys started doing everything with one chip, and those don't bend nearly as well.

[Mortal Engines]

For what amounts to a little instruction and a trip to the thrift store..... there is no point in getting one from someone else. Then again, if you use Reason there are some free circuit bent refill at Combinator HQ.... I just went and checked and it actually is for a combinator that acts like a circuit bent toy.... of course, that would be cheating.



Mortal Engines on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads

[Dave Peck]

A friend of mine in Germany named Joker Nies does a lot of circuit bending and often conducts seminars about how to do it yourself, with lots of helpful 'tips and tricks'. Google Joker Nies Circuit Bending for info.

[teleharmonium]

The whole point of circuit bending is to do it yourself. The usefulness of the bent result becomes your responsibility. I've heard some incredible things from bent SK-1 and SK-5 keyboards; the possibilities are there.

The significance of circuit bending isn't in the sounds themselves, it's in the way you change your mind when you involve yourself in a bending project that results in a less than entirely controllable thing, and subsequently use it in your music and therefore let it change your musical sensibilities, and through that, your life.

If you just buy a pre bent gadget, you don't have the commitment to the result and you avoid the process of discovery and the process of changing your mind. In that case you're just buying a weird recycled noisemaker; it's too easy then to just write it off as useless without spending the time it takes to really see what it can do and consider what that means.

There are of course other ways to achieve the same or similar effects on your musical sensibilities, circuit bending is just one way that happens to be cheap, fun, and effective.

[Derp]

I think everybody should bend an SK-5 at least once in their life. It's easy and it's fun.