In the middle of a musical performance, Bora Yoon will get out her cell phone and start pressing buttons, but don’t give her a dirty look.

In fact, you’ll probably want her to continue. The scratched-up silver flip phone, a Samsung 2004 E-105, to be exact, is one of her newest instruments. Using the keypad as a keyboard, she punches various number combinations into a microphone, creating a tune that’s part futuristic, part ‘80s video arcade — and totally unique. 

Yoon, a 27-year-old New Yorker, calls herself a sound architect. She creates rhythms, tones and melodies using everything from her voice to the electric violin to various objects such as Tibetan singing bowls, music boxes, keys and wind chimes. But it’s the phone that’s got people talking. Her self-composed single “Plinko” scored her front-page coverage in the Wall Street Journal and her own concert sponsored by Samsung.

“It was an old cell phone of mine that I dropped one too many times,” she explains. “It was on a musical setting for the keypad, so the keypad essentially translates into a keyboard — you know, like one is Do, five is So, seven is Ti. When I’d get someone’s phone number, it would already be like a musical little ditty.”

Ever since she was a child, Yoon was an outside-of-the-sheet-music thinker. Born in Chicago, she started playing the piano by ear at 5 years old and developed the ability to create songs on cue. “When I was little, my mom would call me down to play because she had a friend over — which I, like, absolutely dreaded — and I would kind of just pull a whole piece out of my ass,” she recalls. 

Having also received training in voice, guitar and violin, Yoon went on to study music at Ithaca College in New York. She took up songwriting, put out two albums, “Bora Yoon” and “Proscenium,” and won a John Lennon songwriting contest for a piece called “Onward, Upward, Outward.” Her folksy rock numbers have been compared to those of Tori Amos, Beth Gibbons and Ani Difranco.

After college, Yoon entered the experimental genre, fusing unconventional sound-makers with traditional instruments. She’s collaborated with artists such as electronic hip-hop musician DJ Spooky and beatbox maestro Adam Matta. “Bora is a tremendously gifted musician,” Matta says. “She can easily create complex arrangements on the fly.” Last year, Yoon worked with award-winning choreographer Noémie Lafrance on an elaborate production called “Agora II,” which took place in the empty 55,000 square-foot pool in Brooklyn’s McCarren Park.

About a year ago, Yoon began tinkering with the cell phone, mixing in sound-enhancing software like Pophorns, which can transform a phone into various instruments. Soon after making it a part of her shows, she was contacted by the public relations people at Samsung. This summer, Yoon stood in a purple halter dress on a stage at the historic Lincoln Center in New York, punching in tunes for hundreds of eager listeners. Today, her fans range from middle-aged music buffs to hip scenesters looking for new talent that breaks the mold.