The Art of the Creative Short Circuit

Jan 1, 2003 12:00 AM, By Qubais Reed Ghazala

A Beginner's Guide to Circuit Bending

MAKING CONNECTIONS

With the Incantor, we've seen a little of what circuit bending can do to a human-voice synthesizer, a machine whose sound banks are loaded with the building blocks of speech. Imagine bending a circuit that has banks filled with the sounds of musical instruments instead. What about circuit bending a sampler? The circuit-bent Casio SK-1 is a mind-blower. Your sample is recomposed, layered, time-shifted, deconstructed, and combined with other sounds within an often dreamlike rise of odd musical waves.

Once you grasp the bizarre sensibilities of this art form and the highly unusual music that results, you will find yourself poised on the brink of a new world. You have literally thousands of experimental instruments to discover within derelict circuits that can be purchased for next to nothing. I've been bending for 35 years and have barely scratched the surface. Today's abandoned circuits are often quite advanced and hold great bending potential. This is definitely an excellent time in which to circuit-bend!

Qubais Reed Ghazala's work can be found in the permanent collections of the New York City Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney, and in the possession of Tom Waits, Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, and Faust, among others. Ghazala's series of articles entitled “Circuit-Bending and Living Instruments,” published in Experimental Musical Instruments between 1992 and '97, introduced circuit bending to the world. His Web site is www.anti-theory.com, and he can be reached at anti_theory@fuse.net.

WEB CLIPS

Incantors In these examples you'll hear looping, pitch change and abstract streaming. All of these sounds, and way more, are possible with the Incantor design. MP3 EXAMPLES: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Invantors The sounds are from both my Secret Garden recording (multitracked; marked "sg") and from examples of single instruments played straight. MP3 EXAMPLES: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

CIRCUIT PRECAUTIONS

Besides protecting yourself and the components that you add to the circuit, there are precautions you can take that will protect the circuit itself. While exploring the circuit with the test lead, make the connection very briefly at first. Always exercise caution while near the power supply. Voltages here are often higher than elsewhere on the board and can zap a chip if jumped to a pin “downstream.” Forget about that connection if you witness:

1. Any kind of a spark

2. Dimming of electronic displays or lights

3. A pop or hum from the speaker

4. A decrease in volume or a stop in sound

5. Any component (including batteries) warming up

CIRCUIT-BENDING TOOLKIT

•Low-wattage (30W or less) soldering iron, with a very narrow tip (perhaps filed down for fine work). This type of iron is inexpensive and can be found in electronics stores. A soldering station, with a cleaning sponge and resting cradle for the iron, costs a bit more but is well worth the additional expense. The more expensive soldering irons usually have an assortment of tips available, including one with a smaller diameter (around 1/16-inch) that is useful for circuit bending.

•Thin rosin-core solder.

•Small hobby drill (such as the Dremel) for creating holes for mounting switches and other components. Use the ⅛-inch drill bit for the pilot holes and the ball-shaped burr bit to bring the hole up to the correct size for the component being mounted.

•Jeweler's screwdrivers. A set of small, all-metal, noninsulated screwdrivers—slotted and Phillips head.

•Set of miniature crescent wrenches (such as Craftsman from Sears) for fastening all panel-mounted controls.

•Wire clippers (small).

•Wire stripper (small) capable of stripping wire as thin as 25 to 30 gauge.

•Test leads. Insulated wire terminated at each end with an alligator clip.

•Tapered hand bore (optional). This is a hand tool used to ream out holes to the correct size. This tool will increase the ⅛-inch pilot holes to the exact size for unusual components or those too large for a Dremel burr bit, such as a ¾-inch-diameter pilot-lamp housing.

•Resistance substitution wheel (optional), containing assorted resistors of increasing values, which are selected by the turning of a dial. The device is clipped into a live circuit using two leads so that the selected resistor's effect on the circuit can be heard. That will help determine the correct resistance or resistance range needed at a circuit point so that a resistor or potentiometer of the correct value can be soldered into place.

A custom circuit-bending console can be built in the form of an elaborate substitution box. Such a box may contain selectable components (selected with multiposition rotary switches) to run the circuit-bending paths through, including resistors, capacitors, potentiometers, sensors, and LEDs. Like a resistance substitution wheel, a circuit-bending console would be another two-lead device that could be clipped between two circuit points and adjusted to observe audio changes within the operating circuit.

PARTS FOR THE INCANTOR

(1) Speak & Spell. These can usually be found online (often on eBay or other auction sites) as well as at second-hand shops.

(1) Small panel-mount 500K potentiometer with mounting hardware.

(3) Panel-mount mini toggle switches (SPST) with mounting hardware.

(1) Panel-mount mini push-button switch, NC (normally closed), with mounting hardware.

(1) Spool 25- or 30-gauge insulated “wire wrap” wire for the new “bends” you'll solder in place.