Illuminated Sounds has been doing twisted things with children’s toys, and they’ve got a free sample library to prove it – James’ Circuit Bent Library:

Here is a Collection of samples from a few of my own circuit bent toys. I’ve made a quick couple of videos that will show you the method of how I captured these samples. I edited them in Protools at 16bit 441khz as mono WAV files. Feel free to comment or request any more. Enjoy.

See the Illuminated Sounds site for more video demos and the free download.

The Bent Festival

• PERFORMERS – Bent Festival seeks bands and/or solo artists who incorporate home built or circuit bent instruments or ideas in their performance. Please email a short description of your act, along with a link to mp3s and photos if you have them. Please do not send attachments larger than 1MB.
• INSTALLATION ARTISTS – Bent Festival is looking for installation artists who can commit at least 15 hours to creating site-specific pieces of art at each of the venues during the duration of the festival. Installation artists will be provided with space, materials, electronic equipment and tools. Please submit via email a brief description of your installation idea along with examples of your past work. Please be prepared to commit to spending time in the installation space during the festival and be prepared for a shared and at times hectic work environment. No white walls here!
• ARTWORK SUBMISSIONS – In addition to installation artists, we would like to have featured art work that fits with the spirit of the festival from people who might not be able to join us in person or who cannot commit to working in the space during the duration of the festival. Please submit via email digital images or links of your work and a brief description.
• WORKSHOP INSTRUCTORS – Bent Festival is seeking workshop instructors to present on various topics. Topics in previous years have included: General circuit bending workshops for beginners and extremely technical, hands on workshops on a particular aspect or niche of the genre. Please describe the subject you would like to lead a workshop on and provide a one-page description of that workshop, in addition include links or examples of your current and past work in the field.

Details below:

Compensation

Stipends for all festival performers, artists, and workshop leaders will be provided. We have a limited number of travel grants available as well. Please contact us for more information.

Tentative Festival Dates:

New York, NY Bent Festival – April 22, 23, and 24

Proposals:

Proposal Deadline: December 1, 2009
Participant Notification: December 11, 2009
In keeping with the expanding interests of the community, this year we are continuing to open the Bent Festival to performers and artists that create their own electronics as well as to those who hack, bend, modify and destroy them. We are currently seeking performers and artists to participate specifically in these categories: Performers, Installation Artists, Artwork Submissions and Workshop Instructors.

Please send all proposals and questions to:
New York Bent Festival – bentnyc at thetanknyc.org

via getlofi

Circuit Bending For Beginners is a free 30-minute tutorial that shows you how to get started with bending.

The video was put together by Bent-Tronics.com, a site that specializes in circuit bending supplies.

Description:

Circuit Bent Sounds volume 2 includes a huge range of circuit bent samples suitable for Minimal, Tech, Electro, Techno, Industrial and Drum and Bass music producers worldwide.

Drum machines, synths and childrens toys have been assaulted, violated and pushed to the absolute limit, to create a collection of sounds completely unobtainable in any other way.

Circuit Bent Sounds volume 2 was created in conjunction with Paul Norris of Circuitbenders.co.uk – a devoted expert at the art of circuit bending, and a signed recording artist in his own right. Recycling noise since 2001.

Circuit Bent Sounds 2 retails £19.95 GBP.

Features:

• 777 Circuit Bent Samples.
• 303 Loops.
• 474 Circuit Bent Sounds.
• 25 Ready to play patched for Reason NNXt, Kontakt, Halion, EXS, SFZ and Kontakt Soft Samplers.
• Apple Loops version available.
• Acidised Wav and Rex2 (Main Zip).
• Machines used: Alesis SR16, Frontline percussion synth, Korg DDD5 and MR16, the classic Mattel Synsonics, Roland TR727 and the Yamaha DD6. The Circuit Bent Keys and Synths include the Casio SA1, SK60 & SK200 samplers, Fraktal Noise Synth, Korg Poly 800, Purple Keys and the Yamaha VSS200. The Toys used include the analogue Beats Toy, ELC, Matchbox Talking Teacher, Mighty Borg Teddy Bear, Texas Instruments and VTech Talking Computer and many others.

Electro-Music 2009

The scope of this festival is very broad, covering all aspects of electro-music: experimental electronic music, circuit bending, computer music, electro-jazz, modular synthesis, musique concrete, improvisation, algorithmic composition, multi-media, visual art and much more. The focus will be on participant involvement, sharing, community development, audience education, and great music.

Seminars will include:

See the event site for additional details.

Casper Electronic

This awful figurine from the SAW movies is actually a pretty cool 30 second sample/playback module that’s easy to hack.

You can buy them here for $2 a pop from allelectronics.com. It’s almost worth the $2 just for the AAA batteries that come with it.

Horrible movie tie-in toys = bad.

Cheap electronics for hacking = good.

SynthGlove (prototype)

via Denkitribe:

This is my first attempt at using Power Glove as a musical instrument. I made a small circuit using Arduino which converts finger movements into MIDI CC messages.

I’m planning to add an accelerometer to replace ultrasonic sensors which is embedded in the original Power Glove.

A demonstration of a circuit bent George W Bush doll, via the appropriately named Wrongbot.

Before the wingnuts come out in force, note that wrongbot’s work is all-over-the-place sick and wrong, but in a good way.

Brian Green has put together a free sample pack (Mediafire link) of circuit-bent sounds from a Yamaha PSS-7:

I decided tonight that i would try to do some bending stuff with my pss-7 again since i have only messed with it once and never really did much, after awhile of messing around i found 3 contact points that would basically cause the unit to freak out in a different way every time.

The reason i call it the mystery bend is you never know what your going to get sometimes it will loop, other times it will be a Fx sound and it will fade all on its own other times it just does what ever it wants its a mystery, Hence the name.

After while of messing around with it i decided it would be a good idea to make some loops out of the glitches because i could not recreate the sounds it was making and i just decided to make a little sample pack which can be downloaded below.

Yamaha Pss7 – Mystery Bend Sample Pack – Download Here

Please Note: All samples in this pack are original and royalty-free, i just ask if you use them in something please send me a link to check out.

More example videos of the bent PSS-7 are available on Green’s site. Green is also looking for people interested in a circuit-bending collaboration.

Ive been throwing this idea around for a few days, I really like the idea of social colaberations so i decided i would like to start one with circuit benders.

The idea is im going to pick a toy and do something to it, and make 1-5 loops out of it using the mod made then i will then pick someone off the list and send it to them and they will do the same thing, so on and so on

Then after we have been through everyone on the list the unit will come back to me and im going to make a big loop pack using everyones loops made durning the process and some other ones ill make running the unit through different things. The loop pack will then be posted for download.

The reason the unit is coming back to me is so i can make a lot of one shots and just dig for sounds that were left out during the colab so that we can get every little sound out of it for the sample pack.

After the loops are up i would like everyone who had the unit to make a track for a compilation.

Sounds like it could be an interesting project. Contact Green via his site, if you are interested in participating.

Check out Green’s YouTube channel, too, for examples of his creative circuit bending and audio hacking.

Image: chrisglass

This is the awesomely creepy Barbinator 3000, a bent keyboard that promises to keep its eyes – all three of them – on you as you play.

chrisglass says:

My friend Tom spent time with Reed Ghazala to learn about circuit bending.

This is one of the fruits of that time.

via the Synthtopia Flickr Group

kanukanakina – one of the odder electronic music videos we’ve seen lately, features the circuit bent sounds ‘of comemelinhos‘ hacked noise machines, including some sort of torso-tron and a crawling baby synth.

via jzylkin:

This is the synaesthesia-sizer I invented for my girlfriend Kelsey.

We’ll be giving a class on DIY pencil synthesizers at The Hacktory in Philadelphia on June 27th, 2009. Please come! Admission is $10.

If Kelsey goes for this sort of thing, jzylkin’s found himself a keeper, don’t you think?

This is a demo of PHONICPOTION’s wickedly bent Casio SK-1, featuring 24 modifications!

This is a demo of the Dead Space Volume’s Ultimate Bleep and Bloop Box.

Description:

This new analog instrument is crafted from exotic wood and is built to last. Six knobs control oscillation frequency and length of pulse for the three square wave generators. Three toggle switches activate the individual synthesizers.

A collaborative project between otem rellik and craftsman Derek Hendricks, these instruments are hand crafted and available upon request.

Features:

• 1/4″ output
• 3 blue leds
• 3 on/off toggle switches
• 3 oscillation frequency knobs
• 3 pulse length knobs
• Comes powered with three internal 9v batteries

via otemrellik:

This is a demo video for a circuit bent Alesis Hr-16 drum machine, with custom EPROM

via wotatwaat:

Circuit bent Hr-16 with custom eprom. Cheers to burnkit2600 for info on how to do it!!!

This is a quick demo of the Bach Bot 9000, a toy that allows kids to play with circuit bending.

The Chiptune Marching Band is a workshop and performance that involves people from all walks of life making strange electronic sounds with one another, out in the world and in the open air.

It’s an interesting project – and they’ve got the greatest logo in the world!

Dr. Rek rocks the house at the Bent Festival 2008 Minneapolis.

Looks like it was a great performance and event!

via DrRek:

from the new DVD from Absurdity.

Biz ’s ongoing circuit bending documentary project

Shot by Mike Una, Edited by Dr. Rek

this is my karaoke bent toy seti

ts rather absurd

This is a demo of Gannon’s awesome DIY Speak ‘n’ Spell Rock Band DIY mashup, the Speak N Spellbinder.

Check it out and leave a comment with your thoughts!

via mimsey:

Circuit bent speak and spell. For more info go to http://www.mygannon.com