Accidental theremin...

Hello,
I must say I'm not a theremin 'freak' but I accidentaly stumbled on an theremin effect. Yesterday I was hacking this realy cheesy soundtoy cald "relaxing sounds". Concept of the toy is that you choose out of 4 different buttons each having 4 different "relaxing" soundloops, for example 'seasound', ore 'heartbeat'.... So I hacked into this toy and mess around a bit with a little resistor connected between the little hardisc(were the sounds are kept) and the soundoutput circuit while suddenly I heard this low rough sound that reacted an my movement without me touching it..... I think it both changed pitch and volume a bit. It lasted only minute but it was quite a cool effect!
Can someone tell me what effect this is and if it's possilbe to make a simple curcuit like this?

Thanks in advance,

Greets, J

You might want to ask the question on a forum that deals with "Circuit bending".

Knowing nothing about the specific circuit you are bending, my guess is that you were interacting with the "floating ground" of the device.

[i]-- Kevin[/i]

You stumbled upon the clock circuit. Usually circuit benders will use this circuit to create body contact touch points where they connect a little piece of metal or a fancy brass fitting and play the instrument that way.

I have never had one react without actually touching it, though.

I have two gueses:

1. You touched the resistor and left some moisture on it, which dried, creating changes that would have happened whether you were near it or not. Coincidence.

2. The humidity was high so the moisture in the air was able to conduct enough electricity to affect the circuit.

It doesn't take much at all, BTW, to change the pitch but I think you would have been very close to the resistor.

That is the beauty of circuit bending. Random things happen that can't always be explained.

Let me know if you can reproduce the effect.

If you want, you could connect a photoresitor to it play the thing that way....

thanks for the reply,
It was raining a lot that day actually so I guess it good be possible. Good idea with that photoresistor thing also.
cheers, Jeroen