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Wow, that makes Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy sound much more ominous.

I would love to see the look on priests faces if this was brought into the Dark Ages.

This sounds so awsome.

I'd like to own a theremin. That would be fun to play.

Dude, at two minutes into the video originally posted they do Mario as well...

Anyway, imagining some guy in a lab coat toying with a Tesla Coil somewhere and then thinking "you know, I think I could play that Super Mario tune with this thing..." brings a smile to my face. That must've been quit the Eureka! moment...

But HOW do they adjust the pitch of the electrical Discharge?

Crossroads Inc. wrote:But HOW do they adjust the pitch of the electrical Discharge?

The computer it'll be hooked up to will have a means of integrating a midi with an ammeter or something else that produces the variations in pitch.

In simple terms, the power source for the Tesla coil is being modulated.

Steve Ward wrote:This is a solid-state Tesla coil. The primary runs at its resonant frequency in the 41 KHz range, and is modulated from the control unit in order to generate the tones you hear.

So just to explain a little further, yes, it is the actual high voltage sparks that are making the noise. Every cycle of the music is a burst of sparks at 41 KHz, triggered by digital circuitry at the end of a "long" piece of fiber optics.

In other words, what appear to be single sparks creating a tone are actually tens or hundreds of sparks a second which create the sound we're hearing.

For a fun and uber-geeky explanation, and some cool shots of guys playing a keyboard and a bass through a Telsa coil, watch this.

Note that most of these systems use an optical link in the signal chain for safety.

Which brings up a good point: Telsa coils can be VERY dangerous, so if anyone wants to build one of these to play with, educate yourself about the dangers involved. link1 link2

Or, just save yourself some trouble, because Zeusaphones will be available for purchase in 2008.

They said they had the Tetris theme in there, but I didn't hear it. I wasn't too impressed with the Sugar Plum Fairy theme because the notes were too close together pitch-wise (they should have used more octaves!) and it was hard to keep track of the melody when the accompaniment kept going lower and higher than it. Some volume modulation would be nice too. I just don't think Sugar Plum Fairy is all that well suited to such a medium. Video game music is much better.

HOWEVER.

It's still awesome.