Tesla coil music cooler than I thought

[kensuguro]

I recently had the opportunity to listen to a performance on the singing Tesla Coils.. you've seen it all over Youtube and stuff.. basically the buzzing of the Tesla coil is controlled to produce tones, ending up with basically a saw wave oscillator. I believe it has a polyphony of 2 tones per tesla coil but I may be wrong. (it might be an "illusion" of 2 tones while it's mechanically monophonic)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTkjgBRiCsE

What I didn't know from the Youtube videos was how loud these things are. At least the one I heard was amazingly loud. In fact, so loud that the audience had to wear hearing protection. The volume I believe easily exceeded 90db, probably over 100db, or at least much louder than any loud club I've been to. And the tone is piercing and so powerful to the point that it is awe inducing. At first I was like "meh, it's just a simple pulse train", but seeing that the tone was actually made from tiny bursts (pulses), the amazement started to set in.. these weren't the WAVEFORMS I was listening to, but the ACTUAL physical phenomenon of a pulse train. It was electric, powerful, and ecstatic. I wished all synths had that kind of power.

As a person who has produced "electronic" music for many years, it was nice to have been pulled back to the point of origin. Harnessing electricity to make music. And I felt that the raw power of electricity is all but lost. I imagined back in the day, in the earlier days of synthesis (think theremins), that people were taken by the power and mystique of electricity, and the possibility of harnessing it to make music.. not something industrial, but entertainment. That concept is very powerful. It's certainly not how we think of electronica these days.. it would be cool to find something similar, of taking an extreme force of nature and taming it to the point of performing dainty pieces of music with it. (yes, it's the narcissistic tendency of the human species)

[Nestor]

Really amazing, very interesting Ken, I didn't even know about this...

[hubird]

Great show

I visited the Tesla Musee in country of birth Croatia last summer.
Not spectacular there, a few installations with 'lightning' effects, but his life history is nicely exposed.

[pastor]

Deleted by user

[yayajohn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5E4NiP4hpM

that guy cracks me up!

Thanks Ken for posting this, you have "sparked my interest"

This is on my Christmas list now

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IQF2C3Y/ref ... DHQL7ILIY0