So I was having a little chat with the Circuit Master over at www.getlofi.com about how and why we both got into 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!

No laptops. No CD players. No turntables. The Cassette Jockey World Championships will be cassette tape only. And the rules are tough: store-bought, commercial cassette tapes only. (Dig that Paula Abdul out of your closet — you know you want to.) Sounds dull? Think again: how you play those tapes is entirely up to you, and from what we’ve seen insane circuit benders and mad scientists of circuitry do to tape machines, that could get real interesting.

Mark Gunderson, aka Trademark G, is organizing the event at day one of the Maker Faire outside San Francisco, Saturday, May 19. You’ll need a ticket to the Maker Faire — but if you have even a slight shot at access to the Bay Area that weekend, I’d suggest you do that, anyway. (I’ll be there, lurking about, trying not to burn out sensors because I confused +5V and +9V.)

It’s an open call — and if you think you’ve got what it takes to judge, you should get in touch, as well.

Art of the Cassette Tape

Whether you’re going to the Maker Faire or not, I’ve also rounded up cassette tape creations from CDM stories past, just to get your tape juices flowing.

Homemade Cassette Tape DJ Mixers + Max/MSP PC
International Mixtape Project Sharing Tapes, CDs Worldwide
Warhol for TDK Tapes (Okay, video cassette tapes … maybe a VJ session should come next.)
Obsessive Cassette Tape Collection
Homebrewed Game Boy sequencer, via Walkman tape player
Put a Cassette Deck in Your Windows PC

Open Call for Cassette Jockeys

Here’s the full scoop on the “CJ” competition from Trademark G:

2007 Cassette Jockey World Championships
*** CALL FOR COMPETITORS ***

CALLING ALL: Cassette Jockies… Retro-Tech Lovers… Magnetic Media Monsters… Circuit Benders… Multi-Media DJs… Walkman Hot-Rodders… we want you at the:

2007 CASSETTE JOCKEY WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
at the Make Magazine Maker Faire!

Johan Larsby points us to a developer contest at the mind-bogglingly comprehensive audio plug-in site, KVR Audio:

KVR Audio Developer Challenge

Developers are competing for a prize fund donated by readers and users, currently up to US$1770 (probably more than you’d make from a small plug). Developer entries are currently closed, but that means voting is on. There are 31 entries; the contest is pretty Windows-biased with only 5 Mac-compatible entries, which makes me suspect that cross-platform developers will have a major edge in voting.

Of course, the upshot of all of this is that you get to take advantage of lots of free software — just leave a few dollars in the hat to keep the thing going. Here are a few of the more unusual contributions:

PSP Rhythm, the homebrew drum machine for the PSP, just keeps on rolling. The song contest I covered in July is now complete. Ah, but what kind of music can you create with a lowly PSP homebrew app? Something like this:

Tobias K: Nearly Flying
Tobias K: Nearly Flying

Isti: Summer Breeze, Summer Freeze
Isti: Summer Breeze, Summer Freeze

Horace: Plasma
Horace: Plasma

Has a sort of retro-90s game music feel to it, especially in comparison to the glitchy 80s-vintage of Game Boy musicians. I’m still partial to the latter, so I may not be running out to buy a PSP just yet, but this shows what fun you can have making mobile music. The winners all got Memory Sticks so they can make more music.

In other PSP Rhythm news, version 6.1 is here with pattern tap tempo and MIDI file export, making this an effective performance tool and sketchpad for your main computer music app. PSP Rhythm on the road, Fruity Loops at home? Sounds good to me. There are also new skins, tutorials, and forum posts; just scroll down the page for everything:

PSP Rhythm

I love CME. This Chinese manufacturer came out of nowhere with a new keyboard so overloaded with features and priced so absurdly low, initially some of the staff at Keyboard who saw it at NAMM thought there was some kind of translation error, like they didn’t understand the currency conversion. They’ve come up with bizarre products, like a keyboard for composing ring tones. (Really.) And now they’re holding a contest to “design a UF keyboard:”

UF Design Contest

Now, I have to admit, I am a little disappointed, because when I first read the press release from CME I thought they meant we got to design the whole keyboard instead of just the skin. My mind flashed to a musical equivalent of Homer designing a car on The Simpsons. Let’s see, my keyboard will have 9 octaves, cupholders, an espresso maker, and a detachable wireless flexible ribbon controller.

But designing a skin sounds just as good to me. You’d better get in there fast, because so far the entries all look ridiculously ugly. Apparently, the goal was to put as many graphics on a keyboard as possible, even if it means combining images of an Apple Airport with those Nintendo hamster things. Or, at the opposite extreme, turning the monstrous, control-laden CME keyboards into something pink and flowery, as pictured here. I think we need to get our site designer Nat on this one for something with some subtlety. I’ll buy a Natboard.

Now, if we can just get CME to run a contest to redesign their website so we can actually navigate and read it . . .