I am very fortunate in that, amongst my research and music composing I get to teach music. Not music in the traditional sense, and certainly not things like music theory, but things like sound design, Circuit Bending, Graphical Scores and Found Sound.

Today was a circuit bending lecture, I sat at a small table with the students huddled around me and over the course of the three hours I disected two keyboards and discussed basic electronics. Below are some of the sounds I made with the two keyboards I demonstrated, they were amazed at the sheer range of sound that a £3 or $5 keyboard could make with a few simple additional components.

Next week is their turn, they have been sent off to find cheap keyboards and electronic musical toys from charity shops and car boot sales, for us all to take apart next week. So I will post some examples of the noise we make next week. The overall aim with the two groups over the course of the year is to give them 22 very different ways of looking at sound, and we are only on week three.

CircuitBendingLecture128K