Circuit Bending Part I

I've recently become very interested in this underground music making/rebel art/experimental electronics. Its pioneer, Q. Reed Ghazala became interested in taking apart toys in the 70s such as Texas Instruments' Speak and Spell and Speak and Math toys. Today, a vast variety of circuit bending festivalsand artists showcase their talent by circuit bending synthesizers. The only thing one needs to start off is a little creativity- no experience with music or electronics is required, which makes it easy for anyone. A few tools, coated wire, and soldering equipment are the basic requirements; parts and others come later.

A small keyboard, such as a Casio PT-100 would be simple to start on becasue it is fairly simple and can be found on eBay or a garage sale for a few dollars.

Take off the plastic housing with a screwdriver, hook up the batteries (duck tape in place if necessary) and get a piece of insulate wire, to test with.

[Important sidenote: Never attempt to circuit bend any device with an AC plug. The high voltage can easily kill you. The low voltage of batteries (around 6-9 volts) won't do more than a slight shock or spark in the worst case scenario. Don't be stupid and try it. I did for a few minutes without noticing, but I quickly stopped.]

Holding one end of the wire on the speaker leads (usually red and white), turn the keyboard or whatever on, and touch the free end of the wire to various capacitors, resistors, chips, or anything else that looks cool. Chances are the majority if metal/wire contacts you touch, little or no sound will be produced. Once you find a good sound however, touch more parts in that area to get a sense for whats good and whats useless. Familiarize yourself with the names of the parts written on the PC board. If you're organized you can record which parts do what, or mark the board with Sharpie.