How’d you get into modification?
Well, it’s kind of a direct result of finding stuff and having no
money. I didn’t have money to get synthesizers and I wanted to some
electronic sounds. I started doing a lot of circuit bending just because
I’d find all this shit. If you go to The Bins [Portland’s big
Goodwill outlet where everything is dumped in giant bins to wade through]
it’s just undeniable that there’s some technology lying around.
It’s kinda changed now, but I was doing a lot of noise music, the
Mr. Pharmacist tapes. I had a four track, one synthesizer, trying to do
non-sequenced synthesizer music. I was into John Cage, early industrial/
noise, early Cabaret Voltaire, Asmus Teichens... So I was sort of making
soundscapes. Synthesizers have a certain quality to their sounds, so they’re
kind of finite in what you can do with it. If you multitrack a synthesizer
it sounds kind of same-y, so I was always trying to get all the devices
I could. When I started I was also doing a lot of contact micing and they
sort of went hand in hand.
What was the first thing you modified?
I had this drum machine that wasn’t working that I opened up to try
and fix it and ended up realizing that if I touch the circuits I can get
different types of sounds and I never really put the lid back on. Then
I routed through the Radio Shack 150-in-1 kit because I had used one of
those when I was a kid. The first show I played in Sacremento all I had
was a bunch of things, like I’d take this [opened drum machine] out
and play it for a while because I knew where to go, I’d made notes
on what to short. Anyway, this was the first thing and I didn’t really
modify it so much as only do mods that would run in parallel to change
the sounds.
I started modifying, putting knobs on stuff, only after a couple years
of shorting things out with my hands for performances. I went down to
Sacremento (CA) for the Northern California Noise Festival ‘94(?)
I played live there twice before I ever played in Portland and played
a Speak N’ Spell on stage. It was open with the 150-in-1 Radio Shack
kit--which is just a wide range of resistors, capacitors and potentiometer,
some LED circuit stuff, some basic functional things. You could build
a simple preamp, blinking lights, a number counter or little AM radio.
I used one of those that I got at the Bins, layed out sort of like a modular
synth where you can patch into anything else, so you can kind of build
a circuit by just sticking wires into the springs. I took a Speak N’
Spell that wasn’t modified and cut some of the traces and put alligator
clips inside so I could reconnect them to make it essentially stock. I
could take the alligator clip off the inside of the Speak N’ Spell
and then run a set of clips onto the kit and filter out some of the sound,
change some of the pitch or screw up some of the data bus which determines
what words it says. A lot of times it will just do this elaborate set
of syllables that will just run on and on because you screw up the data
bus - the whole logic of the front panel interaction with it gets hosed
and it just starts making sound, which is different than actually tweaking
the output after it generates the sound.
It seems like you could actually divide circuit bending into two parts.
One would be the amplified circuit, the other would be the logic circuit.
One of the easiest things to do with the logic circuit is to just screw
up the little 4 or 8 bit data bus, the chip that has all the words and
syllables and how to interact with the button pressing and that’s
how I got some of the coolest sounds. One of the ones I gave away recently
(to Larold Wills of Topiary Kings) has a little joystick, you put it on
‘insane’ and it would repeat exactly the same 15 minute set
of syllables.
What was the first thing you built?
Probably tape loops. I did a series of 99 tape loops in ‘95. I went
and bought c-shells, just the empty cases. It’s kind of funny to
go into Super-Duper and just say, “Give me 100 cassettes with no
tape in them at all.” I have exact measurements to get the ideal
tension within a loop and you can re-record over it. I wanted the information
to be available to anyone, so I put on the case the exact measurements
in millimeters to make the loop. Including instructions to use them to
make new sound. I had a tape deck with a broken erase head so I could
just record over and layer the sound that was already there. Apparently,
since it was only a couple bucks people would order a few, since it can
be used as a tool. I know people like Dave in Not Breathing still uses
the tapes I gave him, even for the Cds and albums. I think he said he
brought them with him when he recorded with Download in Chicago and that’s
exactly what I was trying to do, make them useful too.
Right now I really want to work on animated film with a friend of mine,
but I’m really trying to do fewer different media and just get better
at a few skills. I gave away a bunch of my film splicing stuff. There
seems to be a strong film scene in Portland that wasn’t here five
years ago and there’s only so much you can do.
I haven’t done too much modifying in this last year or so. I’d
rather just program the sounds and investigate the programming because
if I can program the sounds I can have more control over fine tuning.
There’s a lot of area in synthesis that is unexplored. People would
only ever use like ten percent of what their synthesizer could do until
recently.
What are some other things that you’ve modified?
• 4 or 5 electric drum pads that trigger moog oscillators: gives
them inputs so that they can be triggered from external outputs
• about 25 toys: removed fur and extended limbs, circuit-bend motors
and put notches in gears to make their movement irregular. Re-wired talking
rabbits into little boxes
• casio midi-guitar: given extra knob to overdrive the data bus
• I did do something to a Roland 606. I tried to play this at the
Omco Record Release party. These modifications are based on some modifications
written up Mix magazine in Europe. If you get the service manual for a
synthesizer, drum machine or any kind of toy then you can modify it a
lot because it’s got the actual schematic. So I can tell where parts
are modulating each other and you can understand this kind of routing,
so you can look at the actual circuit. I only have a rudimentary understanding
of electronics, but I’ve been able to figure the logic of this block
diagram and took the article from Mix and I was impatient to do the other
modifications, so I took my understanding of the circuit mods and applied
it to some of the other sounds.
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