4/01/2008

preparation :: bent festival 2008

many of the alias pail circuit bends are very primitive on the technical side of circuit bending. but that's what's great, most circuit bending is very simple. just takes a couple of tools and a little curiosity. the real jewel is finding the right toy to bend. i found this little tikes toy drum off of eBay for a really low price. as the subject of a circuit bend, it's perfect. easy access to the inside and tons of empty space. the color scheme is already perfect, no needed improvements for product design.

the cool thing about the toy is that along with individual electronic sound for each of the four buttons, there's an alternate mode in which each button plays a programmed beat. some subjects for circuit bending don't allow too much variance on tweaking the pitch or the processor speed, but for this one, i was able to find the highest and lowest variances. on the high tip, the beats sound really aphex twin-ish, and the low level, you can hear and follow the low fi sound bit processing come to a grinding halt and stutter. the lfo circuit adds a little choppy start and stop effect to the beats.



fitted with a quarter inch output, if you send the signal into a delay or reverse pedal, it's amazing. the toy is also a fun showpiece for younger kids, since it's made as a necklace, inspired by flava flav's obnoxious clock wearing habits. feel free to ask to play with it after our performance at bentfest 2008 in nyc.

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1 Comments:

At 8:44 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

does anyone know what happened to the ac board?

 

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