Note: All the entries were excellent, and we have a little prize lined up for all of you, not just these top picks. *See below for details

It was very hard to choose three winners from all of the entries- the variety and quality of submissions was amazing. So, we tried to select those that most embodied the spirit of the contest- creativity, within a set time limit, and using only those materials that can be scraped together quickly.

And that didn’t narrow it down much. It was a tough call to be sure, and it makes me think that we’ll be seeing increased stiff competition next year. So, while these three will receive a special prize, we’ve got something lined up for everyone who participated.

Without further delay (ahem), here are the top 3 entries in no particular order:

George Lazenbleep’s Mini Furby:

El Colin’s Bent Guitar:

And Squelchbox’s “The 15 Puzzle”:

Since I forgot to do this at the beginning of the contest-
everyone who entered, please use the createdigitalmusic contact form and send us a message containing the following information:

• Your name
• Your display name
• The piece you submitted to the contest
• Your address and contact info (email is fine)

I will be in touch to make sure you receive your prizes in the mail.

Thanks again to everyone for participating, thanks to our generous prize-donating benefactors, and let’s do this again next year!

No, we didn’t forget about you and all your hard work.

Furby and Jesus, keyboards and guitars and laser gun blasters, pre-natal heart monitors, toys and instruments and strange unidentifiable electronics — in one day, all these things evolved from one thing into … something else. Babies and bigger adult people took to their shops, spent huge amounts of money (one dollar! two dollars!), and came up with remarkable designs. Some were beginners trying their first simple bends, some were serious builders, constructing really playable (if glitchable), convincing instruments. If you’ve never considered bending before, this could change/blow your mind. And for bending lovers, we have quite a range. Thanks to our friend Circuit Master at GetLoFi and Mike Una here on CDM, here come pages of results from the Circuit Bending Challenge I… -PK

(See also GetLoFi’s round-up, especially if you like all your videos on one page.)

A Challenge Met, the Judges Confer

Annnndddd…. we’re done. The last few late entries have trickled in and as we all wipe our brows, holster our soldering irons, and take some aspirin to combat the bleep-induced headaches, I’d like to thank all of the participants.

The range of works produced here all have a few things in common- enthusiasm, ingenuity, and straight-up nerdery. My fellow benders, I salute you.

The panel of expert judges (Peter Kirn, getlofi.com’s Circuit Master and myself) will now commence to review all of your videos, pictures, and .mp3s. We will then get down to recognizing the emergent champions based on a variety of criteria including but not limited to:

1. Creativity
2. Humor
3. Skillfulness of execution
4. Quality and range of sounds produced
5. Esoteric geekiness
6. Adherence to the rules (ahem.)

Remember that we’ve got a few excellent prizes to give away:

A Parasite and stickers from The Squarewave Parade
A MIDI kit from Highly Liquid
CDs and stickers from Tiger Claw Records

Additionally, I have a huge stack of CDs from Futurekomp.net and other various ephemera to give away to everyone who participated, so expect an email from me shortly asking for your mailing address.

So without further adeiu, here is the complete roster of all participants in this year’s Circuit-Bending Challenge:

Comments on that post preferred, though some are having trouble with our spam filter. If that’s the case, just email me at peter (at) createdigitalmusic and I’ll get you sorted.

Stay tuned for a full, formal round-up of all the entries coming soon.

A quick review of the guidelines:

1. Bicycle, walk, or swim to your nearest secondhand store.

2. Locate and purchase a cheap electronic noisemaking device.

3. Take it home and bend that thang!

4. Document the process and end result, then upload it to the internet in some fashion- Youtube, Flickr, etc, all with the tag “circuitchallenge.” (and createdigitalmusic, of course). Still images, audio, and video are all fair game. Bonus points for all 3.

5. Add a comment to this post with links to your entry. I will add them to the post itself as they are received.

You have until midnight on Sunday. Go!*

(* or whenever you like, because we don’t know what time zone you’re in … see comments for further disclaimers.)

An auto-updating slideshow of all flickr’d entries can be seen at getlofi.com, thanks to the esteemed Circuit Master.

Here are the entries, in order received:

Zombie Jesus by Ryan J:

Link

Mini-Furby by George Lazenbleep (With excellent documentation!):

Link

Mystery Black Box by Evil Paul:

Link

Plastic Guitar by Stephen Haunts:

Audio
Link

The Monster by El Colin

Zapper by Vanillatray:

Link

Circuit Bent Toy Guitar by Johan & Lukas Larsby (bonus points for hilarious video):

Some kind of bleepy, blinky thing from BRIAN!

Images

A Saxophone from Fin, which died in the process:

Audio
Link

Squelchbox knocks it outta the park with “The15 Puzzle”:

Images

Burnkit gear’s Kawa Clone:

Link w/audio

Octatone’s 99-cent guitar:

Link

Kubton’s Little Tykes Keyboard:

Audio
Link

VJ Anomolee destroys the Easy Button:

Video
Link

Here’s my own personal contribution to the day: A Prenatal Heart Listener

Looks like some fierce competition already- keep those entries coming!

[Ed. note: We left out a reference to Reed Ghazala's superb book on the topic in our story the other day, so let me mention it again. Reed's Circuit Bending tome is the best paper reference to this stuff. If you feel a little, ahem, inadequate on skills after seeing the artistry in these entries, as I certainly do, it's the place to go. Now that you've got your feet wet, well worth checking out the book for some additional chops! -PK]

Los Angeles readers, Surya Buchwald aka Momo the Monster writes to let us know he’s taking on the Circuit Bending Challenge live and in person, with a workshop. So if you were feeling squeamish about the challenge and want some assistance, this good be a great opportunity. Please help spread the word, wonderful Californians!

Join us for our Next Share.LA!
October 28th is the Circuit Bending challenge, as posted on Create Digital Music. The challenge is to buy a lo-tech music toy, hack it and document it, and upload the results all in one day! Tell you what – I won’t penalize you for buying your toy early or using one you already have. Never circuit-bent anything before? Don’t know anything about electronics? Great! I’m quite an amateur myself, but I know enough to help you get bending – and I’ve got the tools and parts you need. Directions on the Basswerks site.

Share.LA

If any other municipalities want to organize similar events, even informal ones, let me know and I’ll update here. But events aren’t strictly needed, nor is even more than one person: you are your own event. (That’s what I keep telling myself, for sure.) We’ll all be sending good bendy vibes for the next few days.

Posting to Flickr

Got photos? Upload to Flickr under the tag circuitbendingchallenge. (Don’t forget to add them to the CDMu group, too.) Evil Paul is already up there with some items he scored for a mere US 50 cents to $2.00. And that’s the idea: not just making something cheap, but actually salvaging something fairly worthless to others and making it art / something you’d want to keep.

Finding that special device

What makes a device bendable? Two words: cheap construction. Most toy musical instruments are made very cheaply and operate on somewhat simple principles of synthesis/sampling. So what are the telltale signs of a bendable device?

1. Does it make a neat/terrible sound? Keep in mind- this object makes sounds, which you are going hear a whole lot as you modify. It helps if you enjoy the sounds to begin with, or conversely that you absolutely hate them and want to change them completely.

2. Look at the size of the case- once you open it up, will there be enough room inside to kludge around and put more things in? Most toys do, but any micro- or keychain-sized devices do not.

3. Play around with it, if possible before buying. Keep some AAA and AA batteries in your pocket, and a small screwdriver in case the battery compartment is bolted on. There’s nothing worse than taking a potentially fun device home and discovering that it’s completely dead.

4. Does it have a funny or awesome name? Chances are, yes. Who comes up with these names stamped in plastic, I do not know. But often, they are weird and hilarious.

One word to the wise:
WARNING: UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING, ONLY BEND DEVICES THAT OPERATE ON BATTERIES
I’m serious.


What kind of bends can you expect?

There are generally two kinds of toy instruments out there:

1. Synthesizing devices, which generate sound through actual (cheap) oscillators, filters, etc. Some cheap keyboards work this way,and I’ve found a few electronic drum kits that do. Speak and Spells fall in this category also. These can be bent in numerous ways to distort, short circuit, and self-oscillate. What does this translate to sonically? Anything from squidgy bleeps, to analog synth-sounding waveforms, to escalating (siren-like) tones to white noise. These are the easiest to bend, because pretty much all the circuitry is dedicated to audio generation.

2. Sampling/sampled devices, which play back a pre-recorded sound from a memory chip. These can be a little more complex, or less inviting to the casual bender. These can be modified by changing the sample rate of the chip (often with a variable resistor) for wild pitch bends and glitchy, digital blurps, or by shorting out the chip and triggering “partials” of the recorded sound. Sometimes, a contact point can be found that causes the sounds to loop indefinitely.

How to go about finding a bend point:

Image from Circuit-Bending: Build Your Own Alien Instruments (ExtremeTech), the definitive guide to this stuff by bending pioneer Reed Ghazala.

First, get out your screwdriver and remove the back of the device’s housing. At this point, you have several options. Trigger a sound, then:

1. Lick two fingers and touch them to various points on the circuit board.

2. Use your screwdriver to bridge two points

3. Use a wire that’s been stripped at both ends to bridge two points

4. if you want to be more analytical, use a bit of wire with alligator clips at both ends. Anchor it to one point, then touch the other point around the board while triggering sounds.

The most likely points will be all the numerous solder points surrounding any ICs (chips) on the board. Also- try to avoid the contact points that connect to the battery. Not all parts of the circuit can handle a full battery voltage.

Add-ons

Once you find that bridging two points makes a cool sound, mark them with a sharpie. At this point, you can consider doing a more elaborate modification to the device that starts with attaching a wire to each of the points.

The easiest and simplest solution from here is to leave the wires like that, and touch them together when you want to bend that point. However, this isn’t very ergonomic and you’ll have pokey wires going everywere.

If you were to run those wires to some flat metal objects (like pennies or other copper coins), you could use your fingers to touch the coins and bridge the contacts. This is called a “body contact,” because it uses your skin’s conductivity to bridge the connection.

One of the most common techniques is to then put a switch between the wires that can be turned on/off. From here, it can get complicated. Some people build elaborate patch bays to contain all the interesting points. Others prefer covering the surface of the device in all kinds of switches.

Another technique that can create different sounds is to put a variable resistor (potentiometer) connecting the two wires. As resistance is increased/decreased across that connection, the sound will change.

More advanced benders will add in other pre-built circuits like oscillators, filters, etc., which can quickly beef up a simple device into formidable synthesis engines.

Tools you will find useful:

Here’s my recommended shortlist of tools that you’ll find helpful:

Soldering iron + solder
Hot glue gun (for securing your soldered points or holding on knobs)
Alligator clips (with wire connecting two of them, preferably)
Needlenose pliers
A smallish screwdriver

A few quick recommendations

Quick, cheap and dirty works. Especially for your first couple of times. Don’t worry about aesthetics, usablility, etc- just have fun and make crazy sounds. The rest will come over time.

Look around your house for junk to use. Wooden pegs for knobs, paper clips, whatever. If it conducts electricity or you can glue it, it’s fair game.

Now get out there and bend!

[Ed.: Again, the definitive printed-on-trees reference to this stuff is the following book -- highly recommended! We don't do product endorsements too often, but this one is well worth it. -PK]

First: according to Wikipedia:

Circuit bending is the creative short-circuiting of low voltage, battery-powered electronic audio devices such as guitar effects, children’s toys and small synthesizers to create new musical instruments and sound generators.

Second: It’s quite easy and fun, and you’ll be able to produce interesting results very quickly.

Third: To kick things off, I’m going to defer to the esteemed Reed Ghazala, considered by many to be the Father of today’s movement. Y’know, like how James Brown is the Godfather of Soul?

The circuit-bent instrument, often a re-wired audio toy or game, is an alien instrument: alien in electronic design, alien in voice, alien in musician interface. Through this procedure, all around our planet, a new musical vocabulary is being discovered. A new instrumentarium is being born.

Reed has an extensive primer on the science and art of circuit bending. He lays out some safety guidelines, tool recommendations, principles to follow, and his site has many fine examples of “finished” products.

Getlofi.com is an ongoing chronicle of interesting bent projects, innovative techniques, performance videos, and interviews with benders around the world. A must-read.

Make Magazine’s Bre Pettis has a fun video tutorial on circuit bending with Justin Gerardy : link. They highlight a good technique for exploring possible bends using just your fingers.

A host of links related to circuit bending, including how-to’s, examples, and discussion groups can be found at Cementimental’s resources site.

John Hollis has some good tips for interesting bends, including advice on how to create audio loops and how to alter a circuit’s internal clock.

And, if you’re not itching to fire up your soldering iron yet, here are a few inspirational videos of completed projects. Some are simple, some quite complex, but they all start with the desire to play and experiment:

Here’s a simple toy with a pitch/speed shift bend connected to a photoresistor for light-controlled tweaking:

This is a nice modification of a “talking” toy:

In this video the bender added an extra circuit to the toy, in this case an oscillator, to control some of the functions:

Lastly, here’s a project I did last year- attaching a “christmas light timer” to a toy drum pad, thereby “automating” the drum hits into a sequenced pattern:

Enjoy.

Other stories from CDM on circuit bending

The number one reason, for me at least: tons of bend-able toys and devices can be found very cheaply at secondhand and thrift stores.

Which brings us to this:

The premise is simple:

1. Wait until October 28th with growing anticipation.

5. Document the process and end result, then upload it to the internet in some fashion- Youtube, Flickr, etc, all with the tag “circuitchallenge.” (and createdigitalmusic, of course)

6. The Circuit Master and myself will gather the results and feature them here and at www.getlofi.com.

The winner will receive, um, a token prize of low value, to be decided later. Something though. And we’ll publish your picture on the internet for the universe to see.

Of course, it’s not about winning, oh no. It’s about getting off your keister and bending some circuits!

Never bent a circuit before but always wanted to? Now’s your chance!

So mark your calendars now, and hit up the forums here at createdigitalmusic.com with any questions.

*EDIT: Rodney from Tiger Claw Records has agreed to donate a few Circuit Bending Compilation CDs as a prize, and I’ve got a stack of CDs from FutureKomp to give away as well. If that isn’t enough incentive to get out there and bend on the 28th, you’re in it for the wrong reasons!

**DOUBLE EDIT: The Squarewave Parade has agreed to donate a parasite for the contest! Totally awesome.

***TRIPLE EDIT: HighlyLiquid has donated one of their MIDI kits for the contest! So cool!