Circuit bending

Circuit bending is the creative customization of the circuits within electronic devices such as children's toys and digital synthesizers to create new musical or visual instruments and sound generators.

Emphasizing spontaneity and randomness, the techniques of circuit bending have been commonly associated with noise music, though many more conventional contemporary musicians and musical groups have been known to experiment with "bent" instruments.

The process of circuit bending involves experimenting with inexpensive second-hand electronics that produce sounds, such as toys, keyboards, drum machines, and electronic learning products.

[2] Serge Tcherepnin, designer of the Serge modular synthesizers, discussed[3] his early experiments in the 1950s, with the transistor radio, in which he found sensitive circuit points in those simple electronic devices and brought them out to "body contacts" on the plastic chassis.

Prior to Mark's and Reed's experiments other pioneers also explored the body-contact idea, one of the earliest being Thaddeus Cahill (1897) whose telharmonium, it is reported, was also touch-sensitive.