Next Friday I will bring my home brew synth rock to Salisbury, MD. That Saturday, I will be leading a workshop on Circuit Bending. If you are looking at this page and or truly know me then you will know how cool I think this is. This is a photo of me doing bent music in the parlor space of Dixon place. Nice Theater but they only partially embrace the strange...Road trip.

http://www.facebook.com/events/482966945052811/

Howdy Y'all!  Madnoodler is doing a performance and circuit bending workshop in Salisbury, Maryland. The music will go down Friday night June 22nd and then June 23rd we will do a workshop on how to circuit bend the animal band and anything else we can find collecting dust, waiting to get bent and re-vitalized. The workshop is ten bucks plus materials. We also encourage you to bring a toy and some screwdrivers and or solder gun. Either way things will get bent and it should be a great week end.

Noodle Corps Gives Global Discount

Over the years in auctions this keyboard got up to $80 a pop. That's pretty good bread. I've decided to discount this price in hopes to sell more keys to a wider audience. This discount isn't a reflection of how I feel about the work I do on these keyboards. It is hopefully viewed as me wanting to get as many bent animal keyboards in circulation as possible. Why? I think they are a great toy, a fun circuit to modify. I even have 555 timer version but that I cannot discount too much because of the labor and extra materials.  Here's a peak

Bent electronic Boo Bah guts...Hah that sounds pretty gross. Sorry. It had to be done and now I must part with this item.

Got to find more of these flanger pedals. They make a pretty weird but cool fuzz tone.

Mega Blocks Keyboard for mega cheap!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxpv4pNCfks

The Circuit Bent Super Music Center

Here's a keyboard who although seems similar to the animal keys. It's pretty different in how it responds but it worked well with a custom 555 timer chip I built to flash an LED. I then did another feedback loop through a mini green LED. This keyboard can do a wide variety of sounds. Here are links to it un-effected and in a synth combo rock message to Igor Amokian, long time keeper of the bent objects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LCEDE5zrjs

Beware effected animal keys :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEF_PMVGy4w                     

This is the insides of a Roland VS-840. Before laptops this used to be my primary recording deck. In many ways it has features that the industry won't let you have for under a grand. This unit's main fatal flaw is zip disks. I talked myself into thinking it was okay at the time, but a mountain of disks later. Zip disks also break and get dusty. I have been using this deck since I refurbished it, since I gave it a sip of ginger ale. I use lap tops and stuff but I'm from the days of real faders and knobs.

I found that this whole line of toys reacts to variable resistance in fun ways. I always think about zooming in on photos and seeing the pixels. Slowing down the pitch of these toys breaks the sound sample into more rudimentary and often more interesting parts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWrymneJ9VQ

Found a Drummer

Found a drummer. It's my photography friend Andy Joseph. He takes better pictures than me. I may try to put together a trio with him and ??? Rock and Roll and fun musical times. Also working on a new bent keyboard, and working and working and recording when I can.

Animal Keyboard Frenzy

Even the boss man, clean rocker that he is, is after one of my Madnoodled Keyboards. The Animal keyboard is selling and is ever popular. It does have it's attractions. 3 sold this week. 2 in NYC and one in Switzerland. Rock and roll! Totally able to handle your animal keyboard needs


I'd like to be doing more vactrol circuits because they often throw these keyboards into another realm? Who knew that was so much going on inside of these chips? It seems that the right pulses of light and a photo sensitive resistors can trigger things in keyboards that the manufacturing people didn't intend. One time I had a red keyboard. My 555 timer chip made it play all sorts of melodies like ole Susannah? So I look at chips like a safe that I could crack or there's more to everything than meets the eye. 555 timer in astable mode makes cool sounds on it's own but you can make them trick out a keyboard as well. Old circuit tester is now a 556 beast. Fun stuff!

He likes to play.

Back in the city and back at the bench.

Farewell 2011. You weren't the best or worst year. 2012 starts with lots of outside work. But I am putting an Amazing Band Animal Keyboard up for sale each week. I have also been writing music. I record my songs and am hoping to put out some digital publications or maybe get one in a film or two. It may be a challenge finding a place for my music because I am somewhat committed to making music that is fun and or funny to listen to. I think life is too short for songs that don't entertain. People say there's a lot of crap music going on but there is always crap. From time to time we all take a musical dump, but if you bouce it off a friend and they support it you may have just dusted off a new sub genre. I am working on three songs that I started on acoustic guitar in the blue ridge mountains. I didn't foul them up with lyrics yet. As soon as I could I put fender bass guitar on 2 of them. Then the drums were laid down at my friend Jeff's house. I also did some Rhodes piano on the 54. I have done tons of music over the years and have the latest gizmos that emulate things ect, but there is nothing like live instruments. It feels like you are making music instead of being made to make music with pre-fabricated units. Me personally I am shying away from anything but the real thing.