Circuit Bending

Circuit Bending is the practice of purposely short circuiting and modifying toys and electronic instruments to create sounds the designers never intended. You would be amazed at what happens when you open up a keyboard from the 80’s and start playing around with an experimental mind and some patient poking. Be careful not to use anything that is plugged into a wall, battery operated devices only!

I spent many evenings doing just such patient poking; modifying toys and learning to construct simple synth circuits in search of strange sounds. I’ve been known to get obsessed.

Circuit bent sounds figured prominently in some of the later Mobius Band recordings, LOLFM, and other projects. Instruments I”ve modified have been used by bands such as the Beastie Boys, Parquet Courts and Tokyo Police Club. In Fact, one of the synths I built actually gets a prominent solo in the Beastie Boys song “Too Many Rappers”, you can even see a shot of it in the video:

AdRock shouts it out in in his verse: "To all you crab rappers and hackers, And circuit benders tweaked on Splenda".

Here’s a nice article about my circuit bending exploits by local legend Ken Maiuri.