The first talk we went to at Notacon was [Sam Harmon]’s great introduction to circuit bending, the process of modifying sound generating electronics to create new musical instruments. Reed Ghazala is considered the father of circuit bending for his pioneering work starting in 1966. Sam pointed out that a “prepared piano” could be considered the non-electric precursor to circuit bending. It involves the musician placing different types of material on the piano’s components. Sam presented many different examples of where to start with circuit bending: the Casio PT-10, PAiA Theremax, Atari Punk Console. He also mentioned a couple AVR projects: AVRSYN and todbot’s Arduino work.

The session ended with [Thom Robertson] showing off the Weird Sound Generator he built and his GHX software for playing real music with a Guitar Hero controller.