What is Circuit Bending?
Lesson 2 from: Circuit Bending: Making Music By Rewiring Toys and DevicesJ. Anthony Allen
What is Circuit Bending?
Lesson 2 from: Circuit Bending: Making Music By Rewiring Toys and DevicesJ. Anthony Allen
Lessons
Introduction
04:44 2What is Circuit Bending?
07:32 3What is Bendable?
04:47 4Tools You Will Need
03:25 5Tips on Finding Toys and Bendable Things: Lets Go Shopping!
11:01 6Safety: Batteries Only!
04:14 7Safety Gear: Glasses and Shoes
03:27 8Opening Up Your Device
05:05Make a Jumper
02:16 10Making First Connections
10:47 11Circuit Mapping and Notation
07:58 12Types of Knobs and Switches
06:11 13Soldering Tips
04:26 14Connecting Wires to the Board
06:23 15Mounting Switches
08:03 16Connecting Switches
10:29 17Switch Details
01:29 18Closing it Up
02:25 19Some Music Made From My New Bent Keyboard
02:17 20Thanks and Bye!
03:07Lesson Info
What is Circuit Bending?
Okay, let's get started. So what is circuit bending? So first of all, um, I've probably said this in the intro, and I'm probably going to say it again several times. It's not as complicated as you think. If you know what circuit bending is, Uh, relax, because when I learned how to do this, I thought I was in for, like, a math class in engineering class. But it's actually super easy and kind of scary Easy, because basically, what we're gonna do is guess we're gonna do a lot of guesswork. So what circuit bending is is you take something that makes sound some kind of sound making device that's designed to make sounds in a certain way, and then you open it up. You look at the circuit board and you'll, uh, make changes to it so that it makes sounds that it was not intended to make a lot of the famous circuit benders. Look at this as treating the circuit board like a canvas, which I think is really a beautiful idea where you got this circuit board and it exists in one way it's almost like a ...
found object, but it can be changed and twisted and bent, if you will, to make it something different. Right? So that's what circuit bending is. So basically, what we're gonna do is we're gonna get something. Ah, and we're gonna open it up, and then I'm gonna tell you what to look for, what to find so that we can make some new connections inside there That will change the way it makes sense. Now, uh, we're gonna be going through how all of this works. There's obviously some safety things that consider because we're working with electricity. We're gonna get to that in just a minute. So don't start taking apart your stuff. Uh, quite yet. Uh, wait until I tell you what to do and then go crazy. Start taking apart everything you confine. Circumventing has a long history, and there's actually some really interesting books on it. I encourage you to check those out. I thought here in this first video, it also show you one of my most successful bent, uh, keyboards where I took apart a keyboard and, uh, added about 100 switches on it. And I'm going to show you that in just a second before I do that Let me just warn you that, um, the best way to start off doing this is with something much more simple than a keyboard. And we'll talk about that soon. I'm gonna take you on a little shopping trip, Uh, where I find some good bendable stuff in just a couple of minutes. But now let me show you. Ah, my favorite circuit button keyboard and jam out on it for a few minutes. Okay, Sorry for the shaky camera here, but I don't have a good stand for this keyboard. So I have here in my Yamaha ps are 200 sufficiently bent. So you can see this is this is a normal keyboard that, you know, it's a Yamaha keyboard. It's nothing really fancy. Um, this was actually my girlfriends that she had to learn to play piano when she was a kid on. It's just kind of been following her around for a long time. So I thought, Hey, let's make something cool with it so you can see the modifications I did over here. There used to be a speaker over here, and I've replaced it with 12345612345 So 30 switches here on a different circuit. So these each one of these is a switch that flips a new circuit over here where the other speaker was have about 31 2345 23 45 knobs. This one I've already broken off. And but these knobs, I've added where those speakers used to be. Um, so it makes some pretty crazy sounds now, all right, if I turn on some of the drum patterns still just a tempo and and I could just start with switches that one gives me a that accent in Bagram, South. So not all which is and knobs worth all the time. Like, right now, I'm listening to this drum path and it doesn't really like some of the switches. And some of the knobs are only gonna affect sounds that are not the drum sounds or the keyboard sounds. So a lot of what I'm screwing around with the keyboard, and I can call it more of the presets if I remember how. Um Let's the So there. Listen up here to dance, type in a random number. There we go. You can see I also screwed up display. That was a by product. Turn up over here. I like that. Awesome. So there is my Yamaha PSR 200 with about 100 different bends in it.
Ratings and Reviews
Karolina Kaminska
I am a complete beginner to this topic and I enjoyed watching the free live stream of this course. It taught me enough to get started with some ideas, although I anticipate I'll have to follow up with other YouTube videos to ensure I understand enough for different kinds of toys and techniques. Thanks!
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