Musician and composer Nicolas Collins, Chair of the Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Editor in Chief of the Leonardo Music Journal, has written a book. Actually, he updated one he already wrote, and people are excited about it.

Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking is lauded by many as the bible of circuit bending. In this second edition, Nic Collins includes examples of some of the most current bent instruments on the, um, "market," and loads of step-by-step instructions on everything from how to solder to "Making Animated Modern Daguerreotypes."

Gearwire has covered bending events and many benders themselves. If you check out the DVD included in Mr. Collins' book, you will see a version of one of the Gearwire video interviews we did with Eric Leonardson , Chicago's own creator of the Springboard.

Yowza!

Helpful Information & Illustrations Include:

• what is a "solder sucker?"
• adding multiple potatoes in series to increase voltage
• oscillators embedded in electric guitar (p 279)
• live soldering performance
• a handy index of supply sources (US and Europe), tools and supplies, with cost estimates

Among the Rules of Hacking:

• Rule #11: Don't drink and solder.
• Rule #17: If it sounds good and doesn't smoke, don't worry if you don't understand it.

The Laws of the Avant-Garde:

• 1. Do it backwards.
• 2. Make it louder, a lot.
• 3. Slow it down, a lot.

From David Behrman's Foreword to the First Edition:

"In the old days there wasn't any distinction between high tech and low tech. The early analog synths were made by creative individuals like Bob Moog and David Buchla; even the early microcomputers were mostly made by garage start-ups and there wasn't much difference between these and the craft shops that had made lutes, guitars, or violins for centuries. There had always been a good relationship between performing musicians and the craftspeople who made instruments . . . it was on a human scale and almost personal."

So, this one is for all the creative individuals out there, as well as those of us who can't get enough of potato circuits.