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VL-Tone Member Super Mario 64 forum moderator Level: 53     Posts: 17/621 EXP: 1136484 For next: 20635 Since: 07-27-07 From: Montreal, Canada Since last post: 4.7 years Last activity: 6 days 
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| Circuit Bending is the Art or Science, of modifying electronic instruments in unintended ways, mostly by connecting circuits somewhat random circuits points together with wires, switches, creating creating all new sounds and rhythms. Sometimes, a machine can be brought in a state where music and rhythms are improvised on the fly, in a semi-random manner. In other cases, a synth can end up producing very rich and organic sounds that sound nothing like the built-in instruments.
Safety tip: try to avoid making short circuits on the pins near the power circuits.  Also, only do circuit bending on instruments that can run on batteries. Cheap, toy synths are better for that.
I discovered Circuit Bending by myself in 1991 or so (I guess before most of you were born). That's before the Web was invented. One of the first instrument I "bent" is a Casio SK-1, which incidentally, seems to be a favorite amongst modern circuit-benders. The Casio SK-1 is the first, affordable sampler keyboard. 
An actual Casio SK-1 circuit board. When the Web appeared and I started to "surf the net", I was pleased to see I wasn't the only one that was doing it. Now there's hundreds (thousands?) of Web pages dedicated to circuit bending, and even people selling "circuit bent" instrument with added switches, with their case modded and painted. One important fact about Circuit Bending is that it mostly works only with old 80's electronic instruments, that had big circuit boards with multiple chips connected together by large circuit traces. I have a few old synths from the era, like a Yamaha SHS-10, and as you may know, a Casio VL-Tone  though I don't plan on bending the latter.
Modern toy synths have combined all of these chips and circuits in a single chip, that has minimal inputs for power and keys, and audio output, making circuit bending close to impossible. Zoskii is a tune that was originally recorded on tape, then digitized to 22Khz 8-bit audio somewhere in the 90's, using a serial based audio digitizer on a Mac Classic. The version I'm presenting you was "modernized" using an equalizer and advanced reverb to make it stereo and smooth the low-resolution source. Some parts have been looped and some editing was done, but it's close to what the Casio SK-1 originally produced by itself, in the same order. Here's the tune, Zoskii, in 128k MP3 format (2.3MB): Download Zoskii.mp3 Warning, it starts very loud  Also, some of you may find this tune extremely annoying
Personally, I like it, but I guess I've learned to. What I like is how the SK-1 is improvising using quarter-tones, making subtle and somewhat smart variations in the pitch and melody, but that may be the reason why some may not like it, since it can sounds "out of tune". Anyhow, I hope at least one other person can appreciate its "gritty" sound ____________________ 
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Time: Now - Date: Today - Weather: What can be seen outside. - Mood: How it feels. Answer to the universe: 42
It's never ends does it....*music still stuck in head*
