hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0163.txt

Episode: 163
Title: HPR0163: Circuit Bending
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0163/hpr0163.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 12:37:28

---

I
I am more gellen, below tech mystic, and you?
Well, you, my friends, would be listening to another fine episode of Hacker Public Radio.
And today, my friends, we're going to keep it short and simple, and we're going to talk about circuit bending.
As always, I'm always interested in doing it yourself, electronics projects, and getting people interested in open source hardware,
and getting people out and hacking their own hardware.
So, a lot of times, I tend to talk about starting from the ground up and designing your own hardware.
Well, here is another angle on hardware hacking, and this is basically, you could say, reverse engineering.
And you're taking a device, usually some kind of like kids toy, something like that, something that's going to make these little do-do-do-do, you know, weird little tones, beeps, something like that.
And you're going to turn it into some kind of weird musical instrument, in general.
I'm going to flip over to Wikipedia, and I'm going to read the definition for circuit bending.
So, according to Wikipedia, aka the last person that was here, circuit bending is the creative DIY or do-it-yourself short circuiting of electronic devices such as
low voltage, battery powered, guitar effects, children's toys, and small digital synthesizers to create new musical instruments and sound generators.
Infociting, emphasizing spontaneity and randomness, the techniques of circuit bending had been commonly associated with noise music,
though many more conventional contemporary musicians and musical groups had been known to experiment with quote-unquote bent instruments.
Circuit benders remove the rear panel and connect circuits on trial and error basis.
More experienced benders can use a solving eye and add other components such as potentiometers, resistors, or capacitors, which creates even and even broader range of sounds.
So, basically, what you're doing is you are taking an old toy.
So, this is cool because if you've got a little brother, a little sister, if you have children, you're going to have plenty of old toys lying around.
So, this is going to be perfect for you to jump in and if you're interested in the world of electronics, you don't even necessarily need to know the math, any of the fancy words, any of the magic behind what's going on, so to speak.
Circuit bending is a very fun way and a very hacker way to get into electronics because circuit bending is very much literally you are hacking some kind of toy or device and making it into a whole new instrument or sound device that it was an intended to do or never designed to do.
And you're actually exploiting of the way the circuit is designed and you're short circuiting the circuit to create new effects, new sounds.
And basically, it's no around fun way and kind of quick reward as far as being able to poke around and actually get some results and find some kind of circuit bending points.
And also, not only does it have that quick reward aspect of going in and be able to locate the circuit circuit, the circuit bends and stuff like that.
I can't, man, I'm speaking like a circuit bender.
Mother, my career.
But, yeah, here, let's see, because that's going to help.
But basically, with circuit bending, not only do you have the quick results of finding circuit bends and, you know, while you're doing your probes, getting the short circuits and, you know, finding the weird loops and stuff like that.
But you also have the reward of going in digging deeper and like the article Wikipedia added just by adding different resistors, resistors.
I don't know why I'm saying resistors towards, but by adding different resistors or even like capacitors, because basically if you're not familiar,
excuse me, if you're not familiar with electronics, the capacitor is basically kind of like a little battery, basically.
And you could think of it as like a little bucket.
And so the whole purpose of a capacitor in electronics is your dumping, you know, let's say, let's keep it real basic and your dumping electricity into this bucket.
And once the bucket fills up, it's going to dump what it has into it into the circuit.
So, in, for instance, in your little, like, little children's toy, you may have like a button that makes a tone that goes,
on like a regular basis. So, you know, it's a certain tone every beat.
Well, if you add a capacitor in there, that may change the way that circuit reacts.
So instead of it being a constant, steady pulse, you may have a longer tone.
And it may, it may change frequency and maybe a higher tone.
And you may hear the actual charge of the capacitor dissipate or the bucket emptying out.
So it may, or you may get a cool effect like that, or maybe that's maybe something you may get by adding in a potentiometer,
or as we call for short pot, which is no, you're not going to roll it up and smoke it a pot.
It's just short for a potentiometer. So a lot of times in electronics you'll hear the word pot used.
And a potentiometer or a pot is basically a variable resistor, which means it has a resistance from zero to a given amount.
Say, for example, 10,000 ohms. So we can have our resistance from zero to 10,000 ohms and very easily change a tone or the rate of a tone,
or add a lot of different effects just by changing the resistance of a circuit.
And this is the basics and essential of hacking hardware.
And so instead of rambling on, I'm going to, I've got some links to some great videos at the expert village.
I don't know if you guys are familiar with this website, but this is a great little website for learning about all kinds of things.
It's a great website for people, even like grandma or grandpa or mom or dad or, you know, anybody in a family that may not be familiar with technology,
but if they have a computer and the internet, then you can send them to expert village because there's all kinds of videos there, even like how to use your MP3 device, regardless of what brand or how to use a GPS device.
So I'm on advanced to nice videos about circuit bending.
So what we're going to do now is I'm going to have some links into the show notes for videos at expert village by two different people.
Let's see. Let's see. This first person, let's see, it's a lady.
Her name is Binda Brella, is where she goes by under here at expert village.
And you can find her. I'll have a link to this category in the show notes.
But if you just want to browse there yourself, you can go to expert village.com and then go into the categories.
You're going to music, miscellaneous music, and then how to attempt circuit bending on the guitar.
And this is going to have a great little set of videos on basically kind of just how to go in and tweak some kids toys and little little guitars and stuff like that.
Stuff you may find at Goodwill or laying around the house.
All kinds of neat stuff like that. And you may be actually be able to, you know, do on your own.
This second set of videos is...
Gosh darn it.
I do not have the gentleman's name, but I believe that he's associated with the lady in the previous videos.
And you can find his videos at expert village in the same category under music, miscellaneous music, and then how to attempt circuit bending on audio electronics.
And once again, there's a great set of videos on how to get involved in circuit bending and basically how to get started, what's going on, how to probe,
and basically find the quote-unquote circuit bands and the little things that's going on.
So whether you're wanting to get started in circuit bending or just interested in circuit bending here today in Hacker Public Radio,
I've brought you just a couple links where you can sit back and veg out in front of the computer laptop or whatever you've got at expert village.
And just veg out on some of these videos on circuit bending.
And, you know, if nothing else, you've gained some information on the basics of how it works and hopefully you're more informed.
And if it's something that you've like to, you know, perhaps pursue later on, then this is definitely a good resource to pursue on.
And myself, this is something I'm definitely interested in. And I would like to pursue myself.
So hopefully, you know, myself, I'll definitely have a couple projects working on something similar to this idea.
So look forward to more in the future on this topic. And hopefully, you know, I can jump on Hacker Public Radio and show off some of my own projects or, you know, weird instruments or, you know, God knows I've been weird enough.
So why not have some fun music to bring along? But anyway, as always, thanks for listening.
If you've been disappointed with today's episode, remember, as always, next episode is going to be somebody completely different here on Hacker Public Radio.
And always, thanks for listening. And we'll see y'all around.