WHAT IS CIRCUIT BENDING?

[jpvideo]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6Pbyg_kcEk

note: During the production of the film "FORBIDDEN PLANET" (the first ALL electronic music score). Louis and Bebe Baron created "bent" circuits for it's "Electronic Tonalities" 1955-1956. These "bent circuits" were hand wired on to breadboards, and then applied voltage till they literally "burnt out" to create a sonic scheme.

ever smell a resistor pop?

[Hollow Sun]

Circuit bending is the random messing about with circuits (typically audio circuits) to create unpredictable sounds.

A simple example is feedback - move a mic in front of a speaker and you create an oscillator. Similarly, position an electrical guitar in front of an amp/speaker, and you do the same.

You can do something similar with a piece of wire - attach an audio output from an amp to its input and you create an oscillator. Mess with input/output level and you control the amount of feedback and hence the frequency of that oscillator.

Circuit benders do this with noise making toys - they feed back different sections of the circuits to other parts of the circuits. Some connections will do nothing, some will result in unpredictable sounds and noises (and some will cause a fatal short circuit and break the thing!). If you find a connection that makes a sound, you can add a potentiometer to control the degree of unpredictability.

Generally, the sounds are silly electronic bleeps and squirts (and almost always unpredictable and of arguable usefulness). Advanced circuit benders will put devices in the feedback loop for even more unpredictability or more control.

TI's 'Speak&Spell' is a popular candidate for 'bending' as you can distort and modify the words for bizarre robotic speech. But any silly musical toy is fair game (Casios and Yamaha toy keyboards are popular).

Circuit benders are generall geeky, unqualified loonies who noodle around at random placing wires and making connections at random until they find something. Many also take it very seriously and witter on pretentiously on YouTube!

jpvidep said:

note: During the production of the film "FORBIDDEN PLANET" (the first ALL electronic music score). Louis and Bebe Baron created bent circuits for it's "Electronic tonalities" 1955-1956. These "bent circuits" were hand wired on to breadboards, and then applied voltage till they literally "burnt out" to create a sonic scheme.

Dunno where you got that from but it's not strictly true.

At a time before synthesizers as we know them (1957), the Barrons built their own circuits to create a specific sound they had in mind. The process was somewhat serendipidous but they didn't 'bend' existing circuits or products to create the sounds they used on 'Forbidden Planet' or in their other work. Their scheme was always to create 'organic' sounds even though they were overtly electronic.

These sounds were recorded to mono tape and, using musique concrete techniques, spliced together and reversed and sped up and slowed down and processed (simple tape feedback echo) until a montage was created.

Louis and Bebe Barron were modest electronic music pioneers, not the self-agrandising loonies in the circuit bending brigade who take this silliness all a bit too seriously!


Steve

[jpvideo]

In respect to your reply. I heard an interview with Bebe Baron some years ago and she told of building or modifying circuits (of existing devices) and fueling them with electricity till they fried. Yes, most of that material was of course recorded onto tape and manipulated "ala Musique Concrete" techniques.
Has anyone here sat down and listened to the whole score?

I love the smell of burning resistors in the morning

[Hollow Sun]

jpvidep said:

In respect to your reply. I heard an interview with Bebe Baron some years ago and she told of building or modifying circuits (of existing devices) and fueling them with electricity till they fried.

I am not aware of that. My knowledge comes from not only what I have read but a brief exchange of emails with Bebe a few years back as some stuff I had done was brought to her attention:

www.hollowsun.com/vintage/scifi/index.html

These were later released as Freepack #11:

www.hollowsun.com/downloads/index.html

jpvidep said:

Has anyone here sat down and listened to the whole score?

Yes. I have it here. Fabulous stuff.


Steve

[jpvideo]

I think those files came installed on my Fusion. I went though them and didn't hear anything remotely sounding like the score to "Forbidden Planet".

Except for the image of Robby the Robot.

when I start learning the sampling on the machine I will give you a good sample of "the KRELL monster".

"There are many accepted origins of electronic music (a/k/a space music). Let's look at one more targeted to the SF genre. In the 1950s, Louis and Bebe Baron created the soundtrack for the "Forbidden Planet" movie by constructing little cybernetic brains, each one making their own noise. They spliced it all together to create what is still today a thoroughly enjoyable soundtrack. Over the next two decades, a bunch of people invented synthesizers and various devices to create unearthly sounds. Most of the "music" made with these early devices were confined to the noise genre (bloop bloop, beep beep, no melody -- applied to pseudo-classical interpretations)."
Matt Howorth-SPACE.COM

[Hollow Sun]

jpvidep said:

I think those files came installed on my Fusion. I went though them and didn't hear anything remotely sounding like the score to "Forbidden Planet".

The Freepacks do not come pre-installed (unless you bought your Fusion used from someone who did download and install them).

They are not the 'bleep bleep' type but ominous Sci-Fi atmospheric drones. And I haven't claimed they are authentic recreations of the score's sounds but "in the the spirit of....".

www.hollowsun.com/downloads/fp11_demo.html


Steve

[Jesse]

nothing new, I was doing that 43 years ago with the first transistor radio I had, I would turn the radio on open the back cover and take a piece of wire and start making connections where you weren't supposed to, you can get some pretty weird sounds!

[shaggyclown]

It's especially fun using a medal rod while holding the other hand in a bowl of water! woo hoo

[Jesse]

shaggyclown said:

It's especially fun using a medal rod while holding the other hand in a bowl of water! woo hoo

I had a science teacher who did just that, he put coins in the bowl of water, you held onto the rod and if you could reach in and grap some coins and pull them out you got to keep the coins, he never lost and money, you got a light tingle holding the rod, but when you touched the water, like you said "woo hoo"

[gwenhwyfaer]

Didn't anyone ever think of putting a pair of rubber gloves on first?

[shaggyclown]

In 7th grade our science teacher set about to show us a small poof of an explosion. He had this big can with a lid. It had a few inches of flour and something else inside. He set a small jar lid inside with a lit candle stuck/standing on it. The big can had a small hole on the side at the bottom. With a rubber hose attached. With the candle lit and now inside, he set the lid on the can at an angle so some air would still be there for the candle. He instructed one person to kill the lights and me to draw the blinds on the one big window in the room. Which had a big metal case in front to shelter the heater. So I closed blinds and stayed there waiting for him to blow into the short hose. I knew it was gonna blow and figured not very big because the hose was short and he was no fool. The candle light coming out the loose lid lit his face. See, when he blew into the hole which went in below the flour level it would blow the flour around ,,, And just as he blew, I slammed both hands down and the heater casing which made a big noise, and yelled bang! Very loud. It was a must see! He jumped a foot off the floor and spun in circles twice with his eyes wide open. He thought something went wrong and it blew up way to hard right in his face! He was so shook up! The whole class laughed so hard. He looked like a scared rat! He was telling me I could give someone a heart attack doing something like that while trying to catch his breath. I said yeah. You! haha

[shaggyclown]

I just couldn't resist. I was quite a jokster back then. I am sure he was quite embarrassed as he really was frightened big time. and it looked funny. I felt bad for humilating him after. But it was very funny still to be a kid and see a grown man get so startled from a science project he probably had done a hundred times in past years with no problems. He had a hard time telling me off because he was so out of breath. That was too funny. It was the look on his face!

I thought I would share that as the last comments reminded me of it.
Maybe we should share some funny stories here. It may be good for the forum. And we'd have some laughs and be reminded of similar funny things that had happened to us when reading some. Never forget the fun times!