Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Thomas W, Mon Sept 30 2013, 06:04PM

Ive been meaning to ask.... that kind of power are you running this off?

Cause id love to build a setup like this oneday, but i only have a 100A 230v socket... and i doubt the local wiring could hold somthing like that anyway!

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Sulaiman, Mon Sept 30 2013, 06:40PM

Truly fantastic, amazing, mesmerising ,,,, brilliant!

Using it as an instrument as part of an ensemble ...
..if ever I'm asked " what use is it? " I now have a new answer.

Congratulations.

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Goodchild, Mon Sept 30 2013, 06:56PM


Each coil is powered from a 240VAC 50A feed. So a 100A feed should be more than enough to power two coils of this size.

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Thomas W, Mon Sept 30 2013, 08:06PM

Hmm, i was thinking.... do you have a list of songs you plan to play, or do you take ideas?... how do you think this song would work on your 2 DRSSTCs?

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Uspring, Tue Oct 01 2013, 09:42AM

This is absolutely fantastic. You're really making an art of this.

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
..., Tue Oct 01 2013, 05:15PM

That did really turn out well! What sort of interrupter are you using to get those notes out of your coils? I assume its MIDI based?

I would almost say your version turned out better than most of the remixes out there

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Goodchild, Tue Oct 01 2013, 05:33PM

The interrupter used was my custom MIDI based one shown here


Flux Pavilion just posted our video to his facebook page! So even the origonal creator of the music liked it!

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Dr. Drone, Tue Oct 01 2013, 08:40PM

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
HV Enthusiast, Fri Oct 04 2013, 01:31PM

Excellent work Goodchild! I really enjoyed watching that!

I really liked the robotic drums. Kind of reminded me of the old Wurlitzer band organs they used to have on the old carousels.

Daft Punk look out!

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Ash Small, Fri Oct 04 2013, 11:33PM

And some people were saying 'The OLD 4HV is dead'

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
nixie, Mon Oct 07 2013, 04:22PM


I'd been working from a list of song ideas that my 14yr old son provided. He liked "The Scientist", so that was the first.
We're into a new area by mixing MIDI tracks onto audio. Really exciting. Thanks for all the kind words everybody!

Some music carries well to Tesla Coil accompaniment, so please let us know if you have ideas.

There are two DeadMau5 tracks ready for the coming weekend's test run: "The Veldt", and "Ghosts n Stuff". The audio over MIDI Tesla Coil versions are pretty heavy on the sub bass rattle, including pitch bending. We'll be recording them too.
Eric has been working in parallel on new material. The 2013 Halloween show will be a night to remember.

I have to hand it to Eric for his outstanding efforts on the MIDI controller. We could not do these tricks with anything else that I'm aware of.

Jeff

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Thomas W, Mon Oct 07 2013, 04:40PM


I think this song would work the best for teslacoils

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Mads Barnkob, Mon Oct 07 2013, 07:20PM

Call me old, but to this date, there is no songs beating these two... (also rage against dubstep is now over ;) )

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Dr. Drone, Tue Oct 08 2013, 12:09AM

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Tetris, Tue Oct 08 2013, 12:36AM

Tesla Coils make everything sound cooler. You should modulate Fortune Days Glitch Mob, or the Moonlight Sonata. Maybe Halls of Science, or Still Alive (because you're doing science!) If you need a MIDI to either, I have them, because I made them quite a long time ago, hoping that one day Vexser would have polyphonic coils he could play them on teehee

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Andy, Tue Oct 08 2013, 06:18AM

GoodChild, would you beable to play some of these songs, for the twisted folk .
Little loin man,Mumford and Suns
Lose yourself, Emninem
We stand together, Nickleback
Bro Hymn, Pennywise
track 5, two pac
F**k Authority, Penny wise
We didn't start the fire, Billy joel
Copperhead road,Stevie Earle
Run to the hills, Iron Maiaden
The wreck of the edmund fitgerald, Gordon Lightfoot
Wiskey in the jar, Mettallica
Holy Grail, Mark Seymour

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Goodchild, Tue Oct 08 2013, 06:48AM

I think Nickleback would destroy both coils, crash the power grid ,and give me cancer if we tried to play even a couple seconds.

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Andy, Tue Oct 08 2013, 07:40AM

Could you install a circuit breaker?

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Steve Conner, Tue Oct 08 2013, 07:41AM

Yeah, let's work to make this a Nickelback-free zone.

I have a problem with doing dubstep on Tesla coils. They might be able to do the hard, nasty synth sounds, but they hardly produce any bass. You may need to hide a subwoofer somewhere in the setup. ;)

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Andy, Tue Oct 08 2013, 08:27AM

You could possible play some pitchblack, but I'm not sure its that high of a party :)

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Ash Small, Tue Oct 08 2013, 10:18AM


+1. My car is already a 'Stickleback free zone'.

There's always 'High Voltage Rock and Roll' by AC/DC, 'Overkill (long version)' by Motorhead, or what about 'Purple Haze' by Jimi Hendrix?

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Steve Conner, Tue Oct 08 2013, 10:52AM

Yeah! That's more like my taste in music.

I programmed "Dakota" by the Stereophonics a while ago, it was my first experiment with drum sounds. The drum track kind of disappears once the rest of the mix gets going. I think the coil was running into its duty cycle limiter.

I think my next goal is to get a Tesla coil to play the Amen break.

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
nixie, Tue Oct 08 2013, 02:09PM

For those that have a larger DRSSTC and might be interested in producing louder low bass notes:

A piano roll section is pasted below, showing a "Pulsed Octave Multiplex" (for lack of a better name) polyphony trick, having a short duty E2 synchronized with the intended note of D0.
E2 will drown D0 if it's note length is too long, so some experimentation is required.
The object was to achieve a note frequency well beneath what a DR should normally be able to produce with any volume.
I tried it with The Scientist to produce that "helicopter blade wash chop" at the 31 second mark, and have applied it to three other dubstep pieces since.

We should be able to improve on it with additional tweaking.




Jeff

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
HV Enthusiast, Tue Oct 08 2013, 02:47PM

Hey Jeff,

Are you familiar with Conlon Nancarrows player piano studies? These were extremely difficult piano pieces that no human was able to play, so he wrote them for player piano in the mid to late 20th century.

They could be very interesting pieces if ported to a DRSSTC and since written for player piano be very easy to port to a MIDI timeline. Real bizarre atonal pieces.

Check some of his things out - i think you'll like them.



.

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Aragorn, Mon Oct 14 2013, 02:28PM

nixie: What software do you use for your Midi composition/sequencing?

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
nixie, Mon Oct 14 2013, 09:25PM



Good Question!
I'm mostly mac based, and use a paid app named Intuem. Along with some freeware add-on's that expand the functionality.
I refuse to admit it, but Intuem is dead. The author has not updated it's compatibility beyond OSX 10.6.4, and it's latest revision is very much bug-infested. It indiscriminately locks up for nearly any reason.
(Eric will attest to my abnormal "twitchyness" when someone pulls a plug, or changes a setting on the laptop while Intuem is loaded and running).

In spite of all that, I'm genuinely proficient with it's composition tools, and found ways to squeeze every morsel of MIDI goodness out of the coils with only two-note polyphony at hand.
Instant patching allows me to record a MIDI track, or add to one in realtime from a MIDI keyboard, in sync with the original audio track. Improv, as Eric calls it.
I work mostly with flac files, but the same is true for mp3 or other compressed formats. Afterward, I go back and "snap" the notes in bulk to the BPM spacing of the tempo. Achieving professional results by a rank amateur lagging the beat. But honestly, Eric is a true music talent among his other skills. He can improv ad-lib to others in realtime to the tempo. I wish I could do that.

I also use a "cheater" tool to decode more complex electronic music compositions into separated instrument MIDI tracks. That is Melodyne Studio, another paid app. An amazing piece of software. Although it does have a steep learning curve before you can decode an audio file, and assemble a multitrack MIDI file that you'd not be embarrassed to show in public.

I recently purchased a copy of Logic Pro. I played with it for an afternoon... and sat it aside. It appears to support the same features touted by Intuem. Unfortunately the interface and tool list is completely different from Intuem, so in desperation I'll likely stay with Intuem until I can't any longer.

We had another rehearsal on Saturday night, and Eric played his Tesla Coil MIDI overlay of "Fade into Darkness" by Avicii. Unfortunately my camera recorded it completely blurry out of focus, so maybe he'll have it on youtube in a week or two.

Hope that covers it all. Jeff

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Uspring, Tue Oct 15 2013, 09:32AM

Jeff wrote:

A piano roll section is pasted below, showing a "Pulsed Octave Multiplex" (for lack of a better name) polyphony trick, having a short duty E2 synchronized with the intended note of D0.
E2 will drown D0 if it's note length is too long, so some experimentation is required.
The object was to achieve a note frequency well beneath what a DR should normally be able to produce with any volume.

I've been trying to understand, what you're doing here. A D0 has pulses with a period of 54ms. They have a power spectrum containing D0 and lots of harmonics to D0. When you e.g. double up these pulses you'll get about twice the power in D0 itself, but depending on the spacing between the double pulse, you'll change the spectrum of the harmonics. An E2 has a period of 12ms. Does that mean that you have double pulses with 12 ms spacing and 54ms repetition period?

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Steve Conner, Tue Oct 15 2013, 09:44AM

Nixie, you might want to try Ableton Live Lite, or Reaper. Both have a decent "piano roll" MIDI editor.

The "pulsed octave multiplex" is an old psychoacoustic trick, what would have been called "synthetic bass" in a radio handbook of the 50s. If you generate 2f, 3f, 4f and so on then your ear says "Ah the harmonics of f" and infers f.

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Uspring, Tue Oct 15 2013, 10:13AM

So you would play a D1, which contains only the even harmonics of D0 and add the odd harmonics by extra pulses. I can't fit that to Jeffs description, though. What I'm missing is, what the pulse train really looks like.

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Steve Conner, Tue Oct 15 2013, 11:24AM

E2 is 4.5 times the frequency of D0, a frequency ratio of 9/2, so it is kind of suitable for adding those odd harmonics.

The pulse train would look like a bunch of pulses spaced at 12ms intervals ORed with a bunch of pulses spaced at 54ms intervals. The exact details depend on how the interrupter works, but one possibility might be:

Two pulses in quick succession
12ms delay
One pulse
12ms delay
One pulse
12ms delay
One pulse
12ms delay
One pulse
6ms delay
One pulse
6ms delay
One pulse
12ms delay
and so on.

The pattern would repeat every 108ms (lowest common multiple of 12 and 54) so it would really have a fundamental frequency of D-1.

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Uspring, Tue Oct 15 2013, 11:40AM

Thanks, makes sense. I should work out the Fourier transform for this

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Tetris, Tue Oct 15 2013, 09:50PM

I have FL.Studios. Really quite nice. There's even a setting on there that kinda even sounds like a DRSSTC. Vexser used that before he did his DRSSTC comp.

Re: Dubstep On Musical Tesla coils
Goodchild, Tue Oct 15 2013, 10:13PM


I actually used FL studio a while back for performance, (still use it for casual editing) however I found that the latency issues associated with the MIDI and audio stream are terrible, sometimes as much as 50mS to 100mS.

I have sense switched over Logic for Tesla coil related performance stuff, because of the low almost none existent latency.

One of these days I will get Jeff to switch over!