bent

A electronic device that has been altered to make sound it was not orignally intended to make. Usually the result of circuit bending.

I bent a CD player and now it makes noise like Merzbow.

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circuit bender

A person who alters toy soundmaking devices and other electronics to make sounds they were not originally intended to make.

Circuit benders love to rummage through thrift stores looking for Casios's and TI's.

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lo-fi

Short for low fidelity.

Refers to music made with 8bit sound computer such as chipmusic or chiptunes.

Audio that is crunchy and gravely and usually demostraties a poor nyquist frequency.

I love music made on the Amiga ..it's so lo-fi!

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altware

Music that is made with alternative hardware. This includes circuit bending, DIY audio, vintage analog audio and chiptunes.

German for old commodity.

Altware musciains enjoy using electronic equipment that is old, obsolete and generally get under the hood and modify the devices to their needs.

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chiptunes

Music made using the built-in sound synthesizer or any number of devices including the Amiga, the Commodore64, the Gameboy and theNintendo. The resulting sound is lo-fi due to the synth being 8bit.

See chipmusic

I love the bleeps and bloops of chiptunes music.

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Nyquist Frequency

The nyquist frequency is the number of times that a sound wave has to be sampled digitally in order to reproduce it accurately. The minimum is usually twice the highest frequency to be reproduced.

Also known as over sampling

Ignoring the Nyquist frequency usually results in lo=fi music.

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circuit bending

Cirucit bending is a process of modifying electronic devices to make sounds they were not originally intended to make.

Q.Reed Ghazala coined the term in the 90's but discovered the idea in the late 60's when a small transistor radio short circuited in his junk drawer and made synthesizer type sounds.

Truly any electronic devices from a pocket calculator to AC motor can be circuit bent to make sounds but th emost popular targets are children's toys like the infamous Texas Instruments Speak & Spell as seen in ET or the low budget Casio SK-1 sampling keyboard.

I circuit bent my TI Speak & Spell to make some heinous noises and loops.

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