sold out !
Circuit Bent Speak & and Math
OverviewModified -by fastmatt real sound from the texas
instruments chip analog generated speech synthesis
so no sampels!
fastmatt is a professional circuit bender specializing in the classic Texas Instruments Speak & Spell, Read, and Math devices.
My main focus is on providing a quality product that my customers will be proud to perform and record with. Please have a look at my items.
unic sound lot or deep / glitch / drone /
minimal micro sounds.
You are looking at a carefully modified Circuit Bent Speak &
Math, ready for you to glitch and tweak at your next gig or in your
studio. My approach is to provide a simple and intuitive control
layout designed to give you the best bends with a clean and
balanced look.
I have modified this device as follows:
•HAND-E-GLOW - dual ultra-bright blue LEDs illuminate your
hands as you play. The LEDs fluctuate as the volume of sound
changes. Adds a very cool visual effect in semi-dark places
[ RIGHT SIDE ]
•Main power toggle switch - Lets you completely disconnect the
battery power to make sure it doesn't drain when not in use, or
worse, wake you up in the middle of the night.
•Two-way loop switch - Flipping this switch UP will freeze
whatever sound is being made. Flipping it DOWN will LOOP a short
piece of the sound over and over rhythmically. Use the momentary
release buttons to grab the next random loop sound. Using the loops
in conjunction with the glitch, and working the resulting sound
with the pitch bend mechanisms, provides the most interesting
possibilities.
•Momentary loop release buttons - Once you have the toggle
loop switch engaged, use these to briefly release the loop in order
to advance incrementally to find other freakish noises and tones.
Many freeze points end up providing amazing melodic tones and even
techno rhythms! Once you find a cool one, you can work it with the
pitch bends.
•Tone buttons - These three momentary buttons can be used to
play differently pitched tones. The ones on the side create a nice
square-wave sound in low and high pitch. The one on the front makes
a real loud sawtooth sound. All tones can be affected by the pitch
knob and body contacts at any time, along with speech, glitch or
loop sounds! You can pretty much play a song with some practice.
Using them along with the body contacts gives you a sound much like
an electric guitar with whammy bar.
[ LEFT SIDE ]
•Momentary distortion button - Unleash the evil voices! This
gives the spoken voice sound a demonic, distorted overtone, and can
add strange harmonics during a loop freeze.
•Toggle glitch switch - To get the machine into a raving
glitch fit, flip this switch and hit the 'ON' button followed by
various other keyboard buttons. With a little persuasion, this
thing will jabber nonsense interspersed with tones and whole words.
This switch is ON in up position, and OFF in down position.
•Pitch bend knob - This is one of my favorite mods. This will
adjust the pitch of all sound (voices and noise) from very low to
very high. You can almost play a tune with this when freezing
loops. I have used a trimmer to precisely tune the low range for
maximum lowness without crashing.
•Pitch Bend Body Contacts - On the same circuit with the knob,
these two contacts give you an organic control over the pitch. Your
skin becomes a living variable resistor used to control the
system's clock speed. The voltage and current are harmless.
Touching the left contact drops the pitch, and touching both at
once drops it even lower. Use various combinations of pressure on
the contacts to elicit notes or theremin-like sounds! Using this in
combination with the lowest pitch knob setting will drop the clock
to his lowest extreme limit of hopeless guttural doom! Another
interesting effect with this bend is that pressing firmly on both,
while holding down the ON keypad button, gives you a hard-core
stream of crashing, glitching madness, with static-like sound and
frantic, random characters on the display. The TI engineers would
not approve! Also, touching the contacts while touching the 1/8
inch output jack gives you a rapid, frantic glitch. Go too far on
this one and you may need to flip the power switch for a hard
reset!
•1/4 in. Amplifier Output - This is essential for plugging
into an amp. The jack circuit is attenuated with the proper
resistor values so that the sound comes out clean and clear from
your amp. This thing sounds great through an effects or delay
pedal! (Check out my sound sample) For recording to your computer
via the sound card, use the built-in 1/8 in. line-level jack
instead.
Your item may appear slightly different, as the original devices
had slight cosmetic variation.