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STEP ONE : Find yourself an environment suitable for the chaos of circuit-bending. It's always good to have half a dozen or so Speak&Spell's lying around to give the place some atmosphere as i think these photos of our workshop show. |
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WARNING! - DON'T TRY TO CIRCUITBEND OR MODIFY ANYTHING THAT USES MAINS VOLTAGE UNLESS YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. BELIEVE US, 240 VOLTS HURTS MORE THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE
The basic idea behind circuitbending is the art of the creative short-circuit. Basically this amounts to taking a piece of wire and soldering it across two points on a circuit board in order to send digital data into places on the circuit where is was never meant to be. Occasionally this will result in a puff of smoke and a sad fizzing noise but with experience you can persuade an otherwise dull machine to disgorge sounds more savagely ferocious than you could have possibly imagined. Obviously we can't go into specific details for every machine on this page but here are some basics to get you started.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
A bendable machine
Soldering iron
Solder
Some wire
A selection of switches / pots
Patience
In order to get started that's all you really need although as you progress we would advise getting hold of:
A multi meter: to check voltages at certain points in the circuit.
A small guitar practice amp: Not immediately obvious but they are built to take some punishment and you don't want to be risking your expensive mixer or stereo amp by accidentally running high voltages into it when testing the output of a bent machine.
Tools: Hacksaws, wire cutters, drills, socket sets and files come in very handy. Dremel type multipurpose hobby drills are a lifesaver.
Components: A wide range of potentiometers (1K, 100K, 470K and 1M are all handy), preset resistors (100K is usable for most jobs), LED's (blue and UV for preference!), different coloured wire, knobs, switches (usually SPST but SPDT and 'centre off' switches also come in handy), push to make and push to break buttons, jack & phono sockets and just about anything else you can solder in to create an effect.
Oscilloscope: This is only for the hardcore bender (theres a phrase you don't hear everyday) If you don't know how they work you probably don't actually need one!
GETTING STARTED:
1. Open up your machine. If you have chosen a Texas Instruments machine this might be your first stumbling point as the bastards at TI kindly chose to use bizarre star headed screws on a lot of their machines.
2. Repeatedly curse the name of Texas Instruments and add a socket set to the shopping list :)
3. While the machine is making a noise lick your finger tip and touch various parts of the circuit (do not try this on a high voltage circuit unless you want to die). If the pitch of the sound rises or drops or there is another interesting effect when you touch a certain solder point, narrow down exactly which solder joint it is by using a metal screwdriver and mark it or note it down. You've now found a body contact point or a potential pitch knob connection. (see common bends on page 2 for details).
4. Read the section on recognizing common bend points on page 2 and then get a piece of wire with both ends stripped.
5. While the machine is making a noise take your bit of wire and short circuit one solder point on the circuit to another point. At this point there are four options as to what might happen. If nothing happens then try another connection. If you get a massively loud distortion sound or a thumping hum then remove the connection quickly. If the machine crashes (see below) then start it up and try again. Best of all, if the machine produces a weird and unexpected sound then note down the connection and try it again. If the 'bend' you have found is reliable and repeatable then proceed to step 6.
6. When you have found a selection of decent connections you should solder switches or buttons across these points. You can also try soldering a potentiometer across the points to see if the effect is variable. At this point you might also want to consider where you are going to mount the controls on the casing.
7. And that's it for the basics of circuitbending. We advise you now read page 2 of the bending tips and then rush out, buy yourself a Speak&Spell machine and get bending!
CRASHES & LOCK-UP'S:
DON'T PANIC, it's fairly inevitable that any machine you try to circuitbend will crash or lock up at some point during the bending process. You are attempting to do things to these machines that they were never designed to do. The most common symptoms of a crash are when the entire machine locks up and refuses to make any sound or operate in any way, although this state may also be accompanied by sad buzzing sounds or violent distortion noises.
If your machine crashes at any point you can usually start it up again simply by turning it off and back on again. You may find that you have to actually remove the power from the machine for a couple of seconds to get it working again. In these cases it is usually a good move to solder a 'push to break' button in line with the positive power connection. This means that when you press the button the power is disconnected and you should be able to restart the machine when you release the button. This is commonly called a Hard Reset button.
When bending programmable machines such as drum machines or some synths you may find that certain crashes will cause you to loose all the internal pattern memories. This is fairly common so be sure to back up any data you want to keep before attempting any circuitbending.
Sometime a crash is exactly what you wanted to happen so if the machine makes some weird noises as it gives up, try that connection again to see if it repeatable. Low number Casio SA keyboards are the kings of this bend (see voltage drop crashes on page 2)
In extreme circumstances when you can't get the machine started again you may need to discharge a capacitor or two. This is a last resort and if this doesn't work then you machine is probably dead. To do this simply remove the power from the machine and locate any capacitors on the circuitboard, especially ones near to the power input area. Discharge the capacitors by shorting one leg to the other with a piece of wire. This probably won't help but sometimes your machine will leap back to life. It is because of capacitors slowly discharging that you sometimes find that a machine you thought was dead leaps back to life after you have left it alone for a few days.
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