Flashback: Circuit Bending

Music
Flashback: Circuit Bending
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Love weird sounds and curious about circuit bending? Check out this blast from the past: MAKE Volume 04‘s Circuit Bending project by Cristiana Yambo and Sabastian Boaz. This 12-page how-to shows you how to modify a Casio keyboard (they used the SK-5):

flashback_circuit_bending_sk5.jpg

And make this “unstoppably flexible sound organ and sonic effects generator” setup, ready to crank out some Franken-beats (above the keyboard on the right is the patch bay box and on the left is external controller port):

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The best part is that you can take what you learn in this project and bend just about any battery-powered audio toy or musical instrument. This cool illustration (full-sized in Digital Edition link below) shows how you can play open circuits to test out what sounds your device is capable of making:

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Check out the full article in our Digital Edition and for more, pick up a copy of MAKE Volume 04 in the Maker Shed and learn how to make a cigar box guitar, a mint-tin amp, use your Game Boy as a musical instrument, start VJing, and more. Long live bleeps!

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I'm a word nerd who loves to geek out on how emerging technology affects the lexicon. I was an editor on the first 40 volumes of MAKE, and I love shining light on the incredible makers in our community. In particular, covering art is my passion — after all, art is the first thing most of us ever made. When not fawning over perfect word choices, I can be found on the nearest mountain, looking for untouched powder fields and ideal alpine lakes.

Contact me at snowgoli@gmail.com or via @snowgoli.

View more articles by Goli Mohammadi

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