We’d like to take a moment to introduce you to the B500. A synth both internally and externally modeled after a popular sampler from the mid-80s. The reason for its popularity was primarily its cost. For $100 in 1985 ($300 in 2026), this sampling keyboard could be yours. That was a fraction of the cost of the nearest competitor, but it also came with a caveat—audio quality was low-fidelity. Over time this sampler was relegated to the toy bin in most stores and minds, eventually experiencing a resurgence, again due to its affordability. This time, hackers, creatives, and engineers ventured to open things up and started tweaking circuits to find new sounds. It wasn’t until Reed Ghazala coined the term Circuit-Bending in 1992 that a movement had been realized.1
Circuit Bending
Circuit bending is an exploratory art. The premise being that the deeper you go, the more interesting things get. For instance, you could audition every combination of patch capable between analog and digital sections, or try connecting them all in different configurations, or in different combinations of one, two, or three patches, or… you get the picture. And while certain patches will become familiar sounds that you can internalize and reach for with your new sonic vocabulary, there’s always one more sound to be discovered. Whether it’s a new combination of patches, a specific patch that you hadn’t yet tried, or a new sample that happens to sound more interesting when bent with a specific patch, or all of the above, the quest never ends.
Tapping on the orange Circuit Bending button in the B500 will open up the Circuit Bending view. There are three sections that can be patched, representing different features of the synthesizer circuit: analog, digital, and clock. Analog routes can be used to bypass filtering for more gain, connect outputs to inputs for feedback, and route to digital and clock sections to impact address, data, and/or timing functionality with control voltage like behavior. Note that analog-to-digital connections are represented with an orange wire. Digital-to-analog connections are represented with a blue wire. They are treated differently. Also note that bending does not have an effect on synthesized tones, and only the clock section impacts rhythm playback.
Experimental Musical Instruments
For those just beginning their journey, there is a treasure trove of information available on the internet. Take a moment to flip through a few pages of Experimental Musical Instruments.2 This is the first page where the term Circuit-Bending is said to have originated. The magazine dates back to 1985, and Ghazala has stated that his interest in manipulating electronics for experimental purposes started as early as the late 60s. It’s important to distinguish the idea of non-standard instrument making for the purposes of sound exploration from bending instruments that already exist to create sounds that the original designer did not intend. While there is sonic overlap and sympathetic interests between the two fields, they are distinct.
And really, this is a new frontier for SynthStamp. The idea that we can model real instruments in a way that permits dynamic connections similar to those made when bending an instrument. Does this inspire you to want to bend other instruments? Are you content with the B500 as a unique one-of-a-kind tool in your plugin kit? Or do you want more?
1 Ghazala, Reed, Circuit Bending: Build Your Own Instruments, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2005, p. 12.
