 So I put a little current starve on this and basically this is just a knob that does what it's called a current divide And it it lessens the amount of power that's going through the unit I mean I was unemployed and I had all this cool like sense gear and like I sold it all Just just to pay the bills and I got this dinky little Casio keyboard This is a style of phone This is like the digital version of of an instrument that was actually made in the 60s I'm not gonna get all into it and edit it forever on a computer or do many or anything It's just gonna be real simple and And sort of a statement against like how it's cool to be a gearhead and Hardware is so much cooler than software and all this who fucking cares this bullshit just make music So this is like the reboot of it So it has all these really cheesy like digital samples Right Really stupid scratching samples. I would say tweaking and tampering the current pathways of electricity via an instrument or an analog instrument and Kind of rerouting those pathways to create a new secret sound And I think they had a beatboxer one two I saw like, you know, I could make music out of anything like before I wanted more and more better Expensive gear and now I'm like the other direction like capturing something that maybe you like people haven't thought I've had Discounted and making it powerful. So as I do that all these goofy sounds then start to change So they can go really Low and then their character starts to really be altered and now what if I could make you know use circuit bending to learn about electronics and modify it and Now the music has so much more capabilities as well as starting from this Different place. I get it really low Oh For me this Stylophone is like terrible by itself and it's really good the quality after a circuit bit the quality The sounds it makes after it's been messed with is like far greater circuit bendings like this circuit bending is Engineering Circuit bending is not an art for reengineering. I guess even yeah, okay It's definitely a piece of an art form It's it's something that you do to create art although the instruments you create our works of art in and of themselves The ultimate goal of the circuit bend is to eventually incorporate that into music in some way So it's like a work of art that you're making for a work of art There are trends like things that they that the circuit might do and so if anything the Those would be like the hypotheses, but you never know it really know which ones you're going to get out of the circuit and And yeah, I'd like to do with a little bit more science So you get the toy you open the toy up and once you look at the circuit board You kind of get a general idea of what's going on inside of it But you don't really know like oh I'm going to be able to put a probe on this and I'm pro on this one with the Potentiometer in the middle and I hypothesize that it's going to make a logarithmic swirl That just is not the case So there really is no way to put a hypothesis together and in order to be a science you need to do that That's definitely not a science. It's I guess it's an art a folk art or a artistic practice, I guess But you know It's a craft it's a hobby it's fun. It's a great way to use your time like it's you know Obviously the intersection between all those things and because we're all equipped with different Skills from all those areas depending on our own experiences and desires and visions We all approach it from a different way It's interdisciplinary. That's what I call it. So circuit bending is a way that you take old Electronics you pull them apart you take out the circuit board you dissect the circuit board and then you Find a way to Manipulate the current state of the circuit board so that you can create a new sound that wasn't originally intended For what you're working on. I like to use stuff that kind of just been discarded because I don't know I like it has kind of like a history to it, you know It's it's kind of like giving a new life to something that was never designed To have much of a life to begin with just everything about it Man the way you do it and the aesthetic how these things look like why is your toy have a bunch of knobs on it? You know, what's what's that thing doing zoom puts these things out like? Every year it's like a big money maker for them and they're terrible They're there for what for what is designed to do It's not really meant to be something that is high quality It's meant to sell to basically like teenage boys so they could emulate whatever guitar hero It's popular at the time and then you know throw it away in a couple years in a sense like with electronic music like everything is a toy with a bunch of knobs, but you could be that that guy with like The custom dirty hairy handgun. That's like that's what I want. That's what we're making here It's like we're making some shit that like James Bond PPK like oh only one man I know uses this I like that Connection with with the objects and the history of of the objects right because it's not just Something that gets made someone put their life and effort into making this right this stuff's made in in factories The factories, you know have people that work in them and a lot of the conditions are really terrible, right? So someone probably was injured Making this thing right and here we are just chucking it away going like screw that zoom 505 like no Don't screw that zoom 505 someone's mom like probably you know developed leukemia making that there's value in that unscrew That it's weird who runs off in nine volts. I don't have any other power supplies that have nine volt This thing isn't gonna do anything Might be another salvage job There's a connection with real human life and people and I feel like I want to I want to honor that in some way You know and to some extent it's like I feel sorry for him I kind of identify with like you know the stuff that's just trashed You know like oh no one no one wants his crap, but it's like not crap It's actually pretty good. You just got to figure out how to work with it This circuit bending documentary follows three different artists and myself At our different stages of circuit bending the first one is David Caballo who Teamed up with me on this documentary and we kind of worked side-by-side While I was filming and educating myself on the process from scratch to where we are today He was also that he had a little bit of experience But pretty much on the level with me in terms of our knowledge base of electrical engineering Which I found a cool bend which changed the timbre of the sound It was a piano sound and then it got a little more I'd say a raspy or maybe like a saw wave like kind of tremolo That's all melted together So I was really excited discovered a bend and kept on going and shorted it fucking things dead And I didn't have such luck with my other toy either which worked fine But when I busted it open it refused to work. What happened Caballo? Well she used that it for the documentary, huh? And then there's Joe Cantrell who is above and beyond Pretty much anyone that I've met in terms of talking to them about how these things work Let me see what we got some bends, right? We got a Tonka toy. That's good He does circuit bending but circuit bending is just one piece of his much bigger puzzle. Oh, I got a speaking read Well, there's this course pedal has some switches on it. It's been bent This thing which I think used to be an octave pedal put in a different box. I got this to speak in math It's just something he utilizes when he needs to do it in order to manipulate a piece of equipment to get it to where it needs to be So that he can incorporate it in whatever art project that he's working on. So it's in his toolbox These are the the successors to the original speaking spell I should probably contact Sarah Rollins And then the third guy is Travis Varga. Travis had no idea what it was. I picked him up I took him to a thrift store I had him pick out a toy and then I brought him back to the workshop here I walked him through step-by-step what the whole process was This was engaging for me because I caught myself more focused with taking a part with trying different aspects out of the wiring I learned a lot just from doing like a simple little Fisher-Price keyboard taking it apart and putting it back the other again And it just re-emphasizes that even in this digital age a lot of the digital devices are still wired together With still just solder and didn't speaker wire and just doing stuff with your hands again and stuff like that is like if it's refreshing So in this documentary you're gonna see me working side-by-side with David Our trials and tribulations as we started to dig into the world of circuit bending You're gonna see all kinds of weird toys You're gonna see the inside of all kinds of electronics You're gonna hear all kinds of weird noises hopefully you come out with a desire to pursue this on your own and Also with a little bit of education in terms of what circuitry does At least a little more than you had before you started watching this We know so little about electricity like and it's everywhere It's this this thing that gives us all these modern conveniences and enables our art and I just thought I want to know more about this and have that inform my art and what I want to do back in the day circuit bending sort of scene kind of got associated with well Let's just say that it was a scene that valued not taking yourselves too seriously Which is fine at that time I I want to take myself seriously Right words app level one. I was bothered by that as a limitation I told people that like oh, yeah, I do circuit bending. They're gonna have an instant image of what I do that is probably gonna be really different than what I actually What actually comes out of the speakers Holy shit, I did when a friend brought this idea of circuit bending into my life I thought it was absolutely ludicrous So of course I was fascinated by it and as I dug deeper and deeper into it I was looking around on the internet and I saw a free workshop that was available at a local art museum in San Diego So I decided to take the class and the instructor had us bend an FM radio After doing the real simple bend and taking the class It was taught in such a way that I was hooked right away Transistor That's probably the op-amp dude. We might be in good business over here. I like sort of like the DIY aspect of you just You're planning out your curriculum and what you want to learn from circuit bending So, you know, I found out about common things that that are done See where that transistor in here. I want to mess with those One thing I learned early on was that pitch is controlled by resistors And so, you know, if you increase the resistance on that part of the circuit Then you'll lower the pitch because less electricity is flowing through and it's it's lower energy And so that's kind of like a pretty interesting piece of knowledge if Like me making music pitch is a huge part of what I do and Here's the way that we've been controlling it like for so long and Fuck how could you not incorporate that? How could you not learn that and want to become better through that? So here's a that's an on-off switch. There we go. Solve it I Kind of stopped doing it and I got it that's that's when I got more doing computer stuff where I can like well I can just control everything And that's the only band I've done on it See where the output is and it's less associated with this kind of Kind of goofy circus kind of vibe. Not that there's anything wrong with that Reverb in there Speaking spell in a tunnel It's a little chorus thing. It's pretty cool. Um, I basically just Circuit bent this and it and it becomes a kind of an oscillator There we go One of the best things About circuit bending is the fact that I now feel educated about how electronics work where Before a hand me a TV remote and I could open that thing up and I honestly would have no idea what's Going on inside of that thing. It just looks like this little alien city that you're looking at from above that does all kinds of real A handy thing All right, so that's that thing Watching electricity. That's a good point. I think that's kind of how my fascination with Junked here what that threw out of is kind of not Not really having much more of a choice And once you start messing with things and seeing like hey, this is really interesting I want to be able to kind of control what my things do and not have it be absolutely destroyed Can you imagine if if they were code built into this thing? For example, you know as soon as you opened it unless you have some kind of factory authorization It would just kill itself Right be like, oh, wow. Let's see what this band does. Oh, it's on fire. Okay. No, it's dead now All right Once you start messing with stuff and enjoying it and making it your own You know if you buy a soft piece of software or even a piece of hardware We're in the company that the company doesn't allow you to do it, right? suddenly your opinion of that kind of Stuff changes as well. You can start thinking about these ideas of who owns the thing that you're Messing with who owns the product that you just bought. Is it you? Because if it's not then maybe that's a problem Go on thrifting and nicer part of town Hopefully collecting some some nice goods that other people overlooked and are too good for The hunt is interesting because just like any time you go to a thrift store, you have no idea what you're gonna find Nothing, nothing. It's really amazing like how many records got made All right, let's see here So this is this is my life here three four six oh eight Harp skip and jump Hunting is even like the big part of it like where to hit right like You got to hit the spot that people don't go to and you have to look at like Like kind of like what toys you're into and you don't want something that's too simple because it's not worth you know Messing around with and you don't want something. That's too complex because then you can't break it open and understand it first we have some thrift stores found a couple cool gadgets to test This theory of bending the circuits to get a whole new sound We got a couple things it is good to do a little research before you do because there are other people out there that are Circuit bending and a lot of these toys were really mass produced So if you have to make the decision of getting one toy or another It's good to have a little bit of knowledge in terms of oh I should buy this one because I know for a fact that this one has a few bends on it or you could just go trail blazing and decide to Find one that no one has ever done before and open it up and experience for yourself In this process I guess Seems a little ham-fisted, but you know we're going for it and that's how it's gonna happen We're gonna hunt for something and then You know it's gonna be traditional circuit bending really going to shop for children's toys that make noise One way or another is a pretty fun experience So you know just walk into your store you look around you dig you look in places that you probably wouldn't normally look Spend a couple bucks and come home with some treasures that you're gonna tear apart I respect like this random nature of circumventing and that's cool You know when everything's so defined and there's so much intent to creating Sometimes the fun is lost so I think that's that's good to have like a randomized fun up element of it but eventually like you know, I want to gain knowledge about it and to actually Realize like what's happening in the circuit so that I can build my own circuit to modify anything I want and create my own instruments sometimes you find these things with Let's still have the Someone's messages from like 30 years ago. Yeah, you know, it's like this weird little slice into someone's life So you're gonna spend 10 to 20 bucks at the thrift store on toys that you're gonna tear apart Half of them are probably gonna be trashed by the time you're done with them and they're not gonna work We had like a ton of circuit bent things And we're controlling them by this weird genetic algorithm. See how fast I'm doing that You get a computer to do this like a thousand thousand times a second This is actually going to a switch and I had this thing called a mini tron Mini I had this connected to a bunch of relays and relays are electrically controlled Switches so I could basically switch this on and off I think one thing that's gonna help this project move forward is that we have this dedicated space So whether you have you know a corner of your living room or a garage or a dedicated room Even that you could have as a workshop it's a great place to store all the tools on your workbench and have access to all The different components that you're gonna need and store any sort of toys that you want And so we got this workshop set up. It's officially workshop because we have a shop light Or I would tend to make spend most of the time making the software to play music and not actually Practicing in that software So it becomes Or it became kind of Boring for me in a way. Then we got to set up here. We got a soldering iron at the station It's a controllable voltage. So you don't burn out the circuit The soldering iron is something that you're gonna use to not only desolder things But to solder all your components together You're gonna want to have a couple different tips Available for yourself because there's a few different situations that you're gonna run into when it comes to soldering Mainly you want one that's small because most of the components are small So you're gonna want a nice small soldering tip to go on your soldering gun Cleaner for the tip which is better than using the sponge that came with these helping hands So you can see what you're soldering or probing So it holds the thing that you're trying to solder It can hold the wires for you and it gives you like four or five extra hands So that you can go in and put the soldering iron in it and most of them have a magnifying glass in it So you can get a very good look at What you're trying to solder the most important tools would have to be the test leads or probes So you have these nails here to touch the leads and create a bridge and Eventually if you find that does something then we can connect a component in the middle These are a little bit big The problem with that is If you're gonna put this on on a lead it might touch the one next to it and create a short So I have a lot of junk sitting around and I got tired of having Working in the computer and having that much control So and plus you know you spend all day in the computer doing work and doing stuff that I don't want to do Necessarily and the last thing I want to do when I'm like I want I want to feel creative It's like looking at you know a glowing rectangle So if you have something like a keyboard and you're already using up two hands proguring out your leads It's near impossible To get a sound you need a sound to hear before you modify it Let's try to get one of these clipped on so you have one hand free to play the note and the other one to test Test probe a physical device used to connect electronic test equipment to a device under test Test probes range from very simple robust devices to complex probes that are sophisticated Expensive and fragile a test probe is often supplied as a test lead Which includes the probe cable and terminating connector You had to do some weird Asian chopsticks shit like this where you're like pricing the key and then probing out leads Went back to using just like hardware and I have not turned back So and I only use stuff that I find That is or is used or is broken Or and or obsolete so stuff that I find at garage sales last but not least smoke extractor is Safety first So when you are soldering you're also going to want something that ventilates the air I mean a fan works to be able to blow it out of there And of course you're going to want ventilation in the space that you're in yeah I don't want to inhale those fumes and cause any reproductive harm. That's the no no we're not doing that I like this was like, you know a toy flip phone the flip part has since come off So that'll give you an idea of the era from which this toy Sometimes when you bend things though I'll start working in really weird ways. I found that out like after I bent this I really liked the way it sounded and then I left the batteries in there the next time I saw it like the batteries had completely leaked everywhere So this thing the band that's involved in this like absolutely just destroys batteries Those are the two processors that are covered up in big black blobs Black bobs some kind of circuit that they protect from like damage or like people copying their shit Guess first things first mark off. We might think of where the power is so don't fuck with these This is all surface These two come out of the switch as long as I don't touch these two guys I'm good says there's so many screws that hold these things together So it takes a little bit of time you gotta unscrew them once you get them unscrewed that reveals your circuit board Once your circuit board is in the open you need to find your probes and You start to probe the circuit board while you're activating whatever sound it does So you start to probe your circuit board while you're activating the sound and as you're probing while the sound is activated Eventually when you put two probes in a spot while the sound is activated You're going to manipulate the sound in some way And then you can solder those two points together and just put a cable from one end to the other to continue doing whatever Happens when you probe those two points or in the middle of that one wire You can put whatever electrical component you want that manipulates the sound even further Potentiometer is a popular one. So you find a potentiometer That's right for the situation and then you can turn the dial back and forth to either increase or decrease The amount of electricity that's going through that one point. So let's see what's going on here. I have a capacitor Then I have placed on here and speakers there But it does not look like the capacitor is doing its job anymore. So let's see. What is the value of this capacitor? It is 100 micro farads capacitor a device that stores electrical energy in an electric field the physical form and construction of practical Capacitors very widely and many types of capacitors are in common use Capacitors are widely used to block direct current while allowing alternating current to pass smooth the output of power supplies and tune radios to a particular frequency This turn there to See what happens when we pull that resistor out There's a resistor on here, and I wonder what happens I wonder what happens if we Get rid of this resistor. Let's play. No, let's not play. Let's This is also power. So I'm gonna stay away from that It's everything else is cool Mike is over here Mike is up there Two switches are up here There's a cap here You must with this capacitor Super singing So now the resistors out of the mix Information can I help you? Can I help you? Certainly glad I got rid of that. Yeah, see it stops Freaking out You look at the circuit and you look at the traces and you try to trace Sort of the flow of where everything's going and it's easy to see that you know You either have a chip a CPU or it's covered up in the black blob and then sometimes you have another second chip like an analog to digital converter or something and We got to hear this multiple times today And so these are hot points where Audio is being changed and and so you might connect one of those points and make an extra connection to like a Discrete part like a capacitor or resistor and so you're making this jump to sort of affect a different change That's the switch That's all I seem to do is turn shit off In doing this documentary I Myself decided to dig into it more and more as I was working with the other artists that are featured in this film and Really, it's become a part of my day-to-day practice whether I'm composing something inside of a DAW or Just messing around with instruments and trying to make unique sounds to sample It really is just a great and unique way to create something that it really does Individualize whatever you're trying to create. So what I'm doing is I'm bypassing them There's a resistor in there That's set to a fixed amount when I took it out. It did that that craziness, which is awesome. I did an awesome craziness But I'm curious as to whether changing the value of that resistor using potentiometer, which is basically a variable resistor Will give us some other interesting effects potentiometer a three terminal resistor with a sliding or rotating Contact that forms an adjustable voltage divider Potentiometers are commonly used to control electrical devices such as volume controls on audio equipment So I'm gonna change it to that was a 5k resistor, which is pretty which is a pretty So this is a way higher value of resistance And we'll see what that does and that's the randomized Sort of part of it. You might be You know giving the circuit too much power you might it might be under powered and and so you get a lot of really weird effects It's doing something. It's not intended to do the idea is to sort of gain knowledge from that and then to have intent and Knowledge and to do something like to create something like that reverse engineering to engineer I suppose we're gonna try to have fun in the lab doing these bends, but at the same time We're gonna try to pair that with some real learning while you're creating something You're also getting an education on how the electrical components react With the circuit board when you decide to put them in the middle of a bend So whether you're using a capacitor or a potentiometer When you find a bend, you know, you're learning what that is doing to an electrical signal put the resistor back on So the next thing I'm really curious as to whether The actual contact with the human fingers is affecting what's going on here Yeah, it doesn't seem to be having quite the same effect. I can just glue it in there and then just cut out some space Here maybe Wow, so two things clearly the The resistor is controlling the speed Or helping to control the speed. So the higher the resistance value the faster. It's gonna go That's why is that like this thing I want to turn it up suddenly it goes really fast, right? And then I can crank it down And it will repeat right, so that's that thing like just playing itself like it's incredibly fast and But there's still it's still connected when I disconnect it Then it's got no relation to whatever limit of speed Which of course is awesome I'd like to have both of these options in here. It really is harmless. You're not gonna electrocute yourself It's DC power You know unless you're working on something that is plugged into the wall then you're in danger zone But you know if it's just a couple one or two AA batteries It's not gonna hurt you for some momentary. It's not what I want looking for Switch an electrical component that can disconnect or connect the conducting path in an electrical circuit Interrupting the electric current or diverting it from one conductor to another When a pair of contacts is touching current can pass between them while when the contacts are separated No current can flow I'm gonna put the potentiometer in there backwards and And and pointed out the back where the speaker used to be so I'm gonna need To drill hole Okay, cool. So this is mounted in there The toy is a phonics frog pond that I bought at from someone's garage on Craigslist And so, you know speaking spells That sort of thing there they're older and a lot of people have already bent them and taken them off the market So now we have the new versions of stuff like leapfrog phonics the frog funnix frog ponder What have you then you shouldn't have to do that would be like Building like an LFO circuit that would oscillate that would just keep on pressing it on and off So you wouldn't have to do it, but you get a fucking wave to do it for you It was cool right away I kind of found you know a couple of different triggers on the keyboard Panels and just so it was interesting to see how because I had never done something like this You take it apart and you put it back together a different way and it you can kind of make a whole new instrument Now where to put the switch This is a kind of a bulky switch When I first opened up frog phonics frog pond I had Discovered like a pitch bend for like the alphabet and I got really excited Because it sounded really weird Look at this hall This is all the wire I needed more Yummers and I mainly went out from the main CPU So I figured that's where the action was going on and tried to stay away from what looked like power Leads and you know, I would just kind of go around to other resistors So because of that pitch controlling resistor that I found I was like, yeah, you know resistors are probably a good bet resistor a two terminal electrical component that implements electrical resistance as a circuit element Used to reduce current flow are just signal levels divide voltages and terminate transmission lines among other uses Resistors are common elements of electrical networks and electronic circuits, and are ubiquitous in electronic equipment So each one of these bends is off of the main CPU and connected to some other separate resistor Basically took it apart and rerouted some wiring inside of it on the Motherboard panel, I guess I call it and there's a bunch of different inputs That the speaker wire can go into and you basically are just rerouting the speaker wires Until you hit something that gives you a sound or gives you a warping of a current sound So you might get lucky and find a circuit board that has five or ten bends even on the one circuit board And once you have them all mapped out and kind of loosely wired in Then you can go in and solder everything together make it nice and tight And you can either try and put everything back inside its original box Or you can design a new box with the circuit board and all your dials knobs and switches inside of it as well I wanted to fucking work and I want it right now Instead of being like, okay, let's actually think about what the best way to actually implement this is and go ahead and do that Nope. Nope. Nope. What's the fastest? The fastest cheapest way I can do it to make it work right now Part of the thing about circuit bending too is like, you know, the more patience you have The better your circuit bend is going to be Um, I tend to have very low very little patience. I'm like, yes I want to be done so I can fucking use it, you know And so you do it and it's like it works, but it's really slapdash and it like breaks really easy like this one So it's cool. We ended up with like a little new knob and I get to do a couple little filtering Resonance effects with one of the keys on the board. So I was kind of the whole From start to finish and now I have a little instrument souvenir that I can mess around with and Just know that I kind of created a new instrument off something that already was in existence It's pretty cool. Very cool experience So one of the bends that I did that's probably one of my more favorite was definitely the pink microphone I mean it had maybe five bends on it on a very small space I mean I had circuit boards that were like this bit that I didn't find anything on And this is a circuit board about this big and I kept finding bends It was really neat to go in and to be able to put multiple switches in these places and soldered one or two points to different places and really make some Really grimy nasty sounds that I really do enjoy It was part of like a tanca toy Truck set so you can have these like impact wrench sound That's something that I guess this is There we go. There's the impact wrench And like a little horn like a voice that's not working Crank it up. Oh, there's the timing so I can make it really fast Right suddenly it's like pew pew pew And I added a jack to it as well A lot of these things are designed we played with little toy sets with little tiny speakers We plug them into to actual speakers or like they sound different than you would expect them to when they originally Were working because most of these toys just have little speakers on them So you cut those speaker wires and instead of having a speaker You put an eighth inch jack so that you can plug in an eighth inch plug and then source it out to a mixing board Or your computer or whatever you want to record to sample it so that it's the best possible quality audio Being sent out to whatever you want to use electrical connector An electromechanical device used to join electrical conductors and create an electrical circuit The connection may be removable Require a tool for assembly and removal or serve a permanent electrical joint between two points Thousands of configurations of connectors are manufactured for power data and audio visual applications If you're sampling it inside of your computer, you can record it straight into your computer from a 3.5 jack And once you have maybe two or three of these toys that have you know, three or four bands each on them You can hook those all into one mixing board And then really start playing around and adding reverb effects and whatever you really want to create some really interesting sounds I think he's saying late caller on the way That's the See that that that's what's on the other side of the black thing. It's just like a tiny custom itch up and then all So that is that is what the blob actually is. It's it's more orderly than it seems This is a piece of metal And has one it's on a springy thing And so both of these are connected so two sides of the circle are connected if you look at the work where Relates to here that means that that's probably a ground and it's always connected either that that or that Whatever it's due it's like messing things up and you know a slow hypnotic way And I'm gonna have to figure out how to make music with these and they're kind of like these slow loops Yeah, I have four of them. I connected On off switch to each of them and it'll kind of play like some weird jumbled up song that's kind of You know kind of major kind of minor kind of weird and dissonant and it's It's kind of slow and lethargic and really weird and it's like I don't I don't really know what's going on. But I guess that makes sense That it would be slower if it's some effect due to resistance It was one of the first bends that I did and it didn't last very long after it was made But I was able to sample the sounds that I did make I still kind of I'm chasing Those sounds again. I haven't made sounds as cool that touched me as as deeply as the pink microphone did So hopefully someday I'll I'll find something that I can manipulate to make the noises that I really enjoy like that This is also a read gazala thing. I mean all these are you can trace back down but like finding a single Thing and then looking for other points with which it will react You know initially like I wanted to just wire them up and then also test to see if maybe a component in between might You know do something else Joe is one and now on his circuit benzes and the bend is successful It's not pretty but it it has worked a little golf clap and a lot of times they say You're supposed to or read gazala. So it's just supposed to activate it make it do what it's supposed to do And and then you bend from there If you can make it make a sound That it normally would be making and then you mess with it while it's making that sound Sometimes that can be really annoying Another pretty important thing we did was Fucking write down our bends on notebooks that way like you get so excited in the moment And you're like I care so much about this right now Then we got to go back to work So I'm probably gonna forget these bends so we have a little map of the circuit So I'm gonna take some photos here like I do every time We can pretend Hey, man, I went rogue. I was trying to you know, it's like the parkour of spending Sometimes sometimes you fall Transistor a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electronic signals and electrical power Transistors are commonly used in digital circuits as electronic switches Which can be either in a non or off state installing some banana jacks with pretty colors Oh, that's the one I wanted I can You know combine them with these Each one of these jacks goes to one point So I'll have one and then I'll have a bunch branching out And I can quickly move The plug from one to the other and maybe they actually you can actually put one on top Interesting And it's colorful and fun Let's see wires hanging out and stuff positive end of the capacitor here, which is a 100 micro farage capacitor. It's pretty hefty at least for this thing. Um, and then negative is going to Wherever but specifically to right there, I believe Yeah, the the time flew by this week because Because um The shit's legit and we just sat here and forgot about the world and just Got into the world of electronics and That's a great thing This is not a circuit fan thing. It's like a Who made these? Uh, there's a guy that makes these at a workshop It's a We've got the leaps phonics pond And today I'm going to sample through the line out of the jack that I've installed I'll email this to myself to get into the phone or use a phone cable and into my preferred Music tracker software pixie tracker to give it a little bit of chiptune flare And um, I'll build the track there So chop it down. So it's just One cycle Get to a loopable point the loops themselves are Out of tune so to speak or the better way to say would be that they're micro tonal Which is to say that they're kind of in between the cracks of the keyboard So the western scale that we're used to doesn't subdivide pitches quite down that far So it's kind of in between the pitches of what we're used to Onto the right tempo Still getting cut off I want to integrate these loops with other instruments. I'm going to either have to tune up or down the instruments or digitally do that to the audio from the loop But I will do is try to pitch down or up the loop to match the other sound that I want in it So I'll just audition other sounds and then I'll try to get it into Go back to the loop able to change the pitch of it And the pitch it down Do you say I find it challenging to use the bends that I found because These loops just sound really weird not anything that I would have ever intentionally come up with The second pick in there for the flavor Can be kind of challenging working with circuit bent sounds Because they're unpredictable Doesn't seem to be exactly the same each time that you record it I've learned new methods to make music along the way And it's cool to use the circuit bent sounds in All sorts of different ways circuit bending. It's it's not just one thing It's really just this crazy other world this sinkhole that you you're going to just find yourself in There there are no rules, you know the toys dying It has a limited life and then it changes every time You know, it's just a cool way to embrace the randomness for me like they're always parameters and limits that Inspire creativity and just make you work harder within This is like a broken Real to real player. I can actually So I'm just taking that output and putting it into here and there's no tape in it It's just it's messed up in a way that it makes this Noise and when you start to alter the um the volume It'll start to change its timbre So it's like a really nice kind of a drone They can sort of ride and and you know combine other things This is like a crappy multi effects guitar pedal and I put it in feedback With the rest of the in the amp. So the output is going into um the input And vice versa Playing piano and then one day I saw like fucking guitarists electric guitarists with pedals and And I realized like damn I gotta I gotta learn synthesis, you know To get on those people's levels where they're unlocking all this Stuff that's kind of what I want circumventing to do for me You know just to do something I mean the wireless revolution that you know, Steve Jobs wants it's still far away, but it is getting closer, but it's Um interesting to see that it's still a lot of stuff relies on that technology You can also do stuff with like guitar pedals. This is a This is actually kind of a nice guitar pedal that I ruined by by circumventing it. Um I didn't ruin it. I improved it But it does he's really nice All by itself little to this everything in our life in one way or another is benefiting from a circuit board in some way So the most simple things to some of the most sophisticated things that we do Are all based on some sort of electrical circuit It's a huge industry that probably does already have you know people that are even sometimes on the radio that we know about that That mess with this kind of stuff, but I think it's just gonna even get potentially more into the mainstream or just the knowledge will grow which I hope the documentary would will do because uh Even if you're not artistic it is just a cool thing To know how stuff works basically and this is this helps you gauge how a lot of our electronics work I just put it in sheet back with the rest of the And they start interacting with each other So I have a certain measure of control, but there's also you know, um an aspect of this that I don't have um They kind of do what they want sometimes um and I can suggest certain things that they should do It's sometimes they'll do that and sometimes not so it's almost like kind of a collaboration or Cooperation I guess right so this is the kind of thing that I've um been getting into in terms of performance and um a circuit bent stuff um kind of um goes along with that And it gets mixed into to the mix and for the most part I would say 90 percent of the population Has absolutely no clue How any of this stuff works and it's not like this technology is going anywhere It's only going to get more sophisticated And more and more things in our life are going to be completely controlled by electricity flowing through it eventually like I don't see it as like creating like the super Instrument or like the super circuit or whatever like, you know I embrace kind of like Getting into the nitty-gritty of these little things like, you know, these these little entities and You know, I kind of want to Not so much like I want to have more intent with it So so that I'm expanding the capabilities of something um And you know, there's a lot of sound a lot of different Things that you know, you could do A lot of sounds that can be harvested from for example things that are unstable, you know, things that are random and unstable I mean definitely more of a analog to hybrid with wires and stuff um because Because it would be interesting to see how Yes, the more options instrument has the more it can in theory create That's kind of I think would be my best bet would like just be getting a lot of like Electric keyboards and then modular synths and stuff like that and just like stacking them up and then Kind of like plugging in plugging out kind of what they are what are they're doing a lot now still But it's just more already built, you know, so doing the building you could really find like Potentially sounds that no one's heard before I mean She A circuit bending in 50 years is probably going to be just as cool as it is now except I'm looking at toys that I played with 20 years ago And I'm just now educating myself on how those things are So the kids that are playing with the sophisticated computer toys that are coming out nowadays May someday be shopping For the 20 year old laptop computer or tablet that they're using now To tear that apart and manipulate it in some way I could see a lot of stuff being without Cables and stuff so it could almost be more of like a Like film is today when it's really set aside for like the auteurs who really want to like get in Hard and it'll set apart actually people that are really good at it And then some of that are just mediocre I'm sort of like Trying to gain experience playing with these crazy unstable random toys and eventually want to bring this knowledge to modifying casio keyboards No other and you know making keyboards out of weird toys, maybe me making my own custom keyboards And maybe save this one for later The circuit boards that exist on the toys For children nowadays are far more sophisticated than the toys That i'm manipulating when i buy them from a thrift store so It's gonna get interesting to say the least This in 50 years will be like They'll just be probably some pretty crazy inventions from uh From people that just we're going in deep and like whatever i'm not even gonna I don't need to get with the times because that I know what that offers like this is kind of like still in the dark even though it's Almost been bypassed onto the next one, but the people that are really going to be diving deep They're going to be coming up with stuff that you know, probably a whole new tonal structures shrinking them down from big Things you would have on stands to like a pocket-sized keyboard that has everything that you want it to make You know all kinds of music and it's just big enough just it's tiny and efficient And you go anywhere with it and make just all kinds of wagon music and I want like Hundreds of these that's that's the long-term goal Probably replicas of remodulated things that are just like at like whole new instruments. I guess whole new ways to play music So Yeah, yeah, like yeah, definitely like the people that are making their own things Yeah, we'll stand the test of time I believe that Louis and baby Baron when they worked on their the soundtrack to Forbidden planet Louis Baron would make these crazy circuits and he did make all these oscillators himself, but A lot of the stuff they made was really unstable and they would make noise for a certain amount of time And then they would just die. We have to find this scholarship on this I'm not sure if this this might be bullshit, but I like the idea That they began to sort of regard their little electronic Mechanisms as kind of like little living beings They would they would kind of come into being and live a little bit and then they're destroy themselves If we die because they really weren't built correctly and they would just eventually blow up But they would record them as they were we were doing them So circuit bending is a fun experience it really is A fascinating way to kind of just open up a piece of electronics and You know, I enjoy an afternoon kind of playing with this stuff So just kind of like knowing how to make fire This is kind of like a modern way of knowing how to make fire of that kind of survival skill because Now that we're not living in caves now that we're not living out there We have this Silicon base landscape and so You know, this is like us sort of You know learning the lay of the land the new land It's really just good harmless fun And a great way to learn about The stuff that's just all around us and makes our lives You know magical on a day-to-day basis So it's a fun way to learn how the magic trick kind of works You know because it's it's fun and it's rewarding And to put in work and and to make something cool and unique So I kind of I kind of like that idea and circuit bending maybe kind of echoes out a little bit that It is kind of like a You're kind of interfering with a sort of a life cycle And a lot of times the bands will kind of you know, they'll shorten the life of whatever it is So it isn't you know in many ways kind of a live fast die young approach to to electronics But the rewards are great Right, so there you go