# Musical Tesla Coil Musical Tesla Coil, also called Singing Tesla Coil, is a high-voltage plasma speaker that plays songs by modulating its spark output. Austin duo ArcAttack pioneered the format in 2005, and their 2007 South by Southwest debut kicked off a wave of YouTube performance videos that turned the coil into a hobbyist meme. ## Origin The first working musical Tesla coil was developed in late 2005 by Joe DiPrima and Oliver Greaves of the Austin electronic duo ArcAttack, with help from Illinois Tesla coiler Steve Ward, and the band formally launched in March 2006 to play local shows[3]. The label 'Singing Tesla Coil' was coined roughly two years later by David Nunez, the Austin coordinator for the electronic art group Dorkbot, while introducing ArcAttack at the 2007 South by Southwest Festival[3]. The SXSW set is the origin clip most people cite: a video of the performance was uploaded to YouTube on May 31, 2007 and pulled close to two million views over the following five years[1]. Tech site CNET picked up the term shortly after in a March 2007 write-up on ArcAttack, which helped push 'Singing Tesla Coil' into wider circulation[5]. - **Platform:** SXSW (live demo) / YouTube (viral spread) - **Creator:** ArcAttack (Joe DiPrima and Oliver Greaves) with Steve Ward - **Date:** 2007 ## Overview A Musical Tesla Coil is a solid-state Tesla coil rigged as a plasma speaker, where the pitch and rhythm of the audio track are baked directly into the timing of the electrical arcs[1]. Instead of a diaphragm pushing air, the spark itself heats and expands the air around it fast enough to produce audible tones, so the visible lightning and the music are literally the same signal[2]. The result is a performance object that reads as both a science demo and a live cover band. Coverage on YouTube leans heavily into two flavors: theatrical live shows by ArcAttack, often with a performer inside a Faraday cage suit, and hobbyist bedroom or lab clips of hackers firing solo coils through video game themes[3]. Common set lists include the Super Mario Bros. theme, the 2001: A Space Odyssey intro, and rock and pop covers, which fit the coil's buzzy square-wave timbre[4]. The meme is less a joke format than a recurring genre of shareable science-spectacle videos that keep resurfacing whenever a new build goes viral. ## How It Spread After SXSW, Steve Ward took his own coil to DuckKon 2007, a science fiction convention in Chicago, and a clip of that demo was uploaded to YouTube on June 21, 2007, going on to gather more than 2.1 million views[2]. A follow-up video of Ward's coil playing the Super Mario Bros. theme at the Lightning on the Lawn Teslathon in Baraboo, Wisconsin was uploaded on October 11, 2007 and cleared 1.7 million views[6]. A version of the 2001: A Space Odyssey intro played on a coil at Penguicon 2008 was posted on April 22, 2008[7]. Other hobbyists jumped in quickly. Mark Smart staged a Tesla coil concert at the University of Illinois on March 7, 2008, with the recording uploaded to YouTube later that month[8]. New groups such as Eastern Volt Research, Tesla Orchestra and Tesla Music Band launched their own musical builds, and Tesla Orchestra's Open Spark Project ran a 40-minute participatory show in May 2011 built from viewer song requests[3]. Mainstream visibility got a boost in 2010 when Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, starring Nicolas Cage and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, featured a subplot in which a physicist uses Tesla coils to play Stevie Wonder's 'Superstition' and OneRepublic's 'Secrets' to impress a love interest[3]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Musical Tesla Coil? It is a solid-state Tesla coil configured as a plasma speaker, playing songs by modulating the timing of its electrical arcs so the sparks themselves generate the notes[1]. ### Where did Musical Tesla Coil come from? Austin duo ArcAttack, working with Illinois Tesla coiler Steve Ward, built the first musical coil in late 2005 and broke it out at SXSW 2007, where the name 'Singing Tesla Coil' was coined[3]. ### What does Musical Tesla Coil mean? The term refers to any Tesla coil rig used as an instrument, with the coil's spark output pulsed to match a song's pitch and rhythm[2]. ### How do you use Musical Tesla Coil? Hobbyists typically feed a MIDI or audio signal into a solid-state coil's control electronics so that arc timing tracks the melody, then film the performance for YouTube alongside covers of game themes or pop tracks[4]. ### Is Musical Tesla Coil still popular? It is a classic science-demo genre rather than a trending meme, with ArcAttack still touring and older YouTube uploads such as Steve Ward's DuckKon 2007 clip carrying millions of views years later[2]. ## References 1. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX5V_9s0Gfw]() 2. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ff_AXVlo9U]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/musical-tesla-coil]() 4. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdrqdW4Miao]() 5. [https://www.cnet.com/]() 6. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1O2jcfOylU]() 7. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVDmjnCQ1g4]() 8. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdIYwIWfYyo]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/musical-tesla-coil Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library