masters

I don’t think there is anything much cheaper or more accessible than children’s toys when it comes to electronic instruments. One day I hunted around a toys ‘r us looking for something cheap that made a noise.

I found two promising toys:
-    A Hello Kitty keyboard which played either single notes or (at the flick of a switch) popular children’s songs.
-    A radio-shaped toy called “My Own Band” which played drums sounds or beats.

I cracked open the Hello Kitty first, and I literally mean cracked open – I didn’t have a screwdriver small enough to open it neatly. I was admittedly a bit disappointed when I first opened it. There appeared to be two actual parts on the circuit board. A black blob and a resistor. However, the resistor was a doorway to new sounds.

That resistor was the master pitch of the whole instrument. Even shorting the resistor with your finger created suprising results – dramatic changes in pitch. I was incredibly excited about this. I quickly connected two wires to the resistor – one either side. The opposite ends of the wires I connected to small copper plates and taped to the front of the toy. I now had a toy that could be manipulated by touching the copper plates – the output of the toy was defined by the resistance of your body.

The “My Own Band” toy actually required a slight amount more work. After some playing around with the toy – essentially touch parts of the circuit board whilst it was trying to play sound – I found two points where I figured I could put some switches so I could turn these alterations on and off. I soldered wires to these points and added switches.

I got a suprising variety of sounds from this instrument.

I was hooked. I continued to make more circuit bent toys. Eventually I made sure that whenever I made one I immediately sampled it, as sometimes a bent toy didn’t last as long as it manufacturer intended. I spent some time trying to make music in which most (if not, all) of the sound was from a circuit bent toy.