Circuitbenders - Custom built electronic audio insanity machines

'The art of inflicting various forms of sonic buggery on the carcass of a helpless musical toy'

Circuit Bending was a term first used by bending pioneer Reed Ghazala, to refer to the art of taking an ordinary electronic toy such as a Texas Instruments Speak&Spell, and rewiring the circuitry to produce a device capable of creating all manner of weird and unlikely sounds.

Creations such as Ghazala's popular 'incantor' series have become the stuff of legend. The unwilling participants in these sonic crimes are early Texas Instruments machines, Speak&Spell, Speak&Maths and Speak&Read. Originally intended as pre-school educational toys, the fact that these machines utilize the first form of commercial speech synthesis makes them ideal for circuit bending. Due to the circuitry being so primitive and un-integrated it is possible to create all kinds of feedback loops and glitches within the electronics resulting in 8 bit sounds unlike anything you have ever heard before.

Circuitbending can be inflicted on many different machines including many talking pre-school educational toys, toy sampling instruments such as the Casio SK and Yamaha VSS series, and many early digital drum machines such as the Roland TR-505 and Alesis HR-16. The only main requirements for a machine to be circuitbent is that it's circuitry is below a certain level of technology (no more requests for Korg Wavestations or Nord Leads please) , it makes a noise and it's not likely to kill you in the process. Above is a Matchbox Talking Teacher machine, to the right is a TI Speak & Maths and below (from left to right) is a Roland TR-505, a Yamaha VSS-200 and a JEN SX1000

Circuit Bent instruments are used by many bands and producers including: Kraftwerk, Hallucinogen, Plump DJ's, Shpongle, Jack Dangers (Meat Beat Manifesto), Nine Inch Nails, Autechre, Aphex Twin, Damon Albarn, Raiden (Renegade Hardware), Younger Brother, OTT, Charlie Clouser, Cevin Keys (Skinny Puppy, Download), Eat Static, KMFDM, 16 Volt, matrix22 and numerous experimental, industrial, techno and ambient artists.

At Circuitbenders we produce a variety of Circuit Bent instruments including custom bent Speak&Spell / Maths machines and modifications for Roland TR drum machines, Casio SK-1 & SK-5 sampling keyboards and Yamaha VSS keyboards along with other more random instruments. We'll even have a go at bending anything you can send to us within reason. Take a look at the SHOP page or use the forms at the bottoms of each page to contact us and see what we've got or what we can build for you.

	To download demo mp3's of the kind of drooling insanity these things produce go to the soundz page. Many more mp3's can be found around the site
SOUNDZ		SHOP

	We're working on a new contact system, in the meantime if you want to get in touch, click the button on the left and fill in the form on the page that opens.
	Alternatively sign up at the circuitbenders.co.uk forum for the latest information and circuitbending related nonsense.