SuperForester Chris Presents: A Beginner's Guide to Circuit Bending!

Dear SuperForest,

My name is Chris!

Granted, this isn't my first appearance in SFHQ (I'm already rolling in some cool acronyms! Just kidding.), but I figured an introduction would be nice. I, like many, stumbled on this website while sifting through a new favorite musician's blog, and I was hooked. I think within a week I had read close to every post. I was attracted to the immense style, positivity and kind vibes. SuperForest became a safe haven of the internet!

To be honest, I feel extremely out of my league with such an awesome crew to begin with. I am a rookie! Everyone starts somewhere, and needless to say SF is an extremely welcoming environment. One that I'm so excited to write, share, and explore with such cool people in.

And with that, I'd like to share a little story:

My friend, SuperForester Matthew, and I have recently gotten ourselves into circuit bending.

From Wikipedia:

"Circuit bending is the creative, short-circuiting of electronic devices such as low voltage, battery-powered guitar effects, children's toys and small 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. Circuit bending usually involves dismantling the machine and adding components such as switches and potentiometers that alter the circuit."

And that's just what we did. We picked up an old child's keyboard from the Goodwill store (any DIYer's heaven) for six dollars. We took a walk to a local electronics wholesale shop and bought anything we could think of. The two women working there thought our complete lack of basic electronics knowledge was "cute." It probably was.

We walked back home, set up a small workshop in Matthew's room, complete with an open window and an air cleaner/fan (you don't want to breathe in solder smoke!), dismantled the keyboard, touched terminal to terminal with alligator clips until we found desir able sound-altering effects, soldered components like toggle switches, potentiometers, and even 1/4 inch stereo cables for electric instruments into these points. A guitar sounds awful through a toy circuit, believe me.

All in all, we had a super fun afternoon. We never realized how accessible a "hobby" could be. All it took was walking around town and a desire to have fun.

Here's a video we took. If you can get over the TERRIBLE quality and the home movie style, I bet you can see how much we were enjoying it. And how much you can too.



With love,
Chris


(Jackson here... Amazing post, Chris!
I got all excited about circuit bending and found these cool videos on youtube:





Furby sounds forlorn. Cheer up, Furby.

Also! Just found this gallery of mp3 examples of circuit bending via makezine.

SuperForester Chris Presents: 1977 Stevie Wonder Interview!

Hello Y'all!

Just got an email from the amazing SuperForester Chris, who writes:

"Hey Jackson. I was just browsing today, and I found this.
Stellar interview. I think you'll really like it."

Wonderful!

Thank you very much, Chris.

SuperForester Chris Presents: Electoral Map!

Hello SuperForest,

We've just received an email from SuperForester Chris. It is emails like this that make SF so worthwhile.

I'll let Chris explain:

"Hello there Jackson!

It is election day. I was sitting up tonight listening to music and I saw the "Color Your Own Electoral College Map." So I did. And I practiced some of the things you said. Well, tracing that is. Boy do I like tracing now. It's very... visually dependent. Anyway, I made a little something. Maybe you could put it on Superforest? Maybe you could include my little prose? That would be amazing. I really enjoyed making it, and it was pretty much the first piece of art I ever made. Also, I wrote this at 3 am. It's practically barely presentable. Maybe you could put the picture of me in too? Honestly, I don't mean to sound bossy. This is just such a great opportunity, Jackson. Thanks brother.

Today has gotten me to thinking. First of all, let me say that I am 16 years old. Do you know what that means? One half of my life has been the Bush presidency. The only half I've been politically 'aware' has been the Bush presidency. What are the implications of this, you ask? For one, I don't really know what being proud of my country feels like. I have never experienced it. I also have not felt anything good reading the daily news. I have never really felt communal hope and connection with the people of this country as a whole. Nationalism? What's that?

Essentially what I'm saying is that I'm starving for a change. One that will resound what I stand for: love, compassion, honor, optimism. Hopefully we get that today, but last night I stayed up a bit and made this little map. Maybe it's a little something you can see in your mind when you watch the final tally tonight?

I bought a box of watercolors the other day. I really like them. But as you can see, I'm not so good at it! But I decided to make a little present for my best friend. I mixed some blue and red and sort of practiced on another sheet of paper. I live in California, so I started with the first logical state: Colorado (just kidding, it was arbitrary)! Then I added one after another states until I finished all of them. Some were better than others. I personally liked Utah the best (it was so perfectly purple!). As much as I like diversity (and America has plenty), I decided to sort of mix all of us together with water. Oh, and I let us congeal a bit. I forgot about leaving it vertical (I suppose all paths in the US lead to Mexico and Cuba).

Isn't that what this country was founded on? It was founded on the paradoxical and strong balance between diversity and unity. And by golly, we haven't become a house divided. After 200 years all we have is a few cracks in the foundation and maybe a small termite problem, but we're still standing. On top of that, we're still standing to witness a monumental day in the history of our country.

So let's forget about red and blue for a day. Let's forget about black and white. We have the choice to make it only a matter of hope. That's what I'm doing. And you know something? I'm content with having a solid B in AP United States History. Because I'm now part of history.


With love and hope,

Chris"

(That's Chris in the yellow shirt.)

Amazing Chris. Thank you so much for that beautiful post.

-Jackson