Learn About Circuit Bending

Series Summary

Circuit bending is one of the most creative ways to make random weird noises. It involves soldering and wiring contact points on the circuit boards of common sound-producing electronic items like children's toys or synthesizers to alter the sounds such items make. The wiring is attached to switches that can then be used to control the "bent" circuit and create strange, unique, and interesting sounds. Circuit bending is commonly associated with noise music, but such improvised musical instruments have been experimented with by a variety of musicians.

In this free video series, our expert Amanda Claire will teach all you need to know about circuit bending. She will show you examples about circuit bending, the purpose of circuit bending, and talk about who does circuit bending. She will talk about what kinds of items & toys are good for circuit bending, circuit bending ethics, and electricity and soldering safety. Amanda will discuss all the necessary equipment for circuit bending including screwdrivers, alligator clips, wires, wire cutters, soldering irons, solder, solder wicks, tape, batteries, volt meters, drill bits, and various other components. Amanda will even tell you about potentiometers, circuit bending ethics, and all kinds of different switches.

Video Transcript

"AMANDA CLAIRE: All right. Off. Hi. My name is Benderella from Austin, Texas and I'm here for Expert Village. And I'm here to show you introduction to circuit bending. And I have a website, its www.myspace.com/benderella, B-E-N-D-E-R-E-L-L-A. And I've written a little kind of introductory guide to circuit bending which, if you want to email me through MySpace and get a copy of it, I can help you with that but I'm going to kinda go through a lot of the main things today. Basically what circuit bending is, is it's a kind of a hobby that a lot of people gotten the past 10, 15, 20 years which is taking low-voltage battery powered things like kids electronic toys that make sounds or sometimes little battery powered musical organs, and you crack them open and sort kind of explore the circuitry inside to see what kinds of new things you can make that little gadget do, what sort of new sounds you can make it make. And then you rewire it. Put some new switches or button or dials and like I've done here, and then you have something new that you can use in music you can use it in performance art, you can keep on the house, give it as a gift and so, we're kinda go through step by step. Some of the different tools and techniques and hopefully you can learn something about circuit bending from this."