Tesla Coil Fun

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starbuck26

starbuck26

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Hey everyone,

So here's my idea. I want to put a tesla coil in the center of the stage and shoot lightning bolts at the audience. My bass player is an electrical engineer and claims he can make such a device. I've seen coils on the net connected to keyboards and to bass guitars. My idea is to connect them to drums.

So yeah, I know what you're going to say. Use drum triggers. Electronic drums, etc. Fuck that. We like acoustic drums, and want it to be an addition to our live set, not a replacement of our live set.

Here's the question. Is it possible to measure out a definite eq range for each individual drum. Basically, supposing a kick drum knocked out X hz, we would have the Tesla coil "open" uh, like X times per minute, or whatever.

I understand I will need to tune the drums carefully to fairly exact pitches. But what are "ideal" frequency ranges. How do I measure the frequencies of the cymbals, etc.

I'm going to stop asking questions before I get a nosebleed. Pseudoscientific musings are quite welcome at this point.

huzzah,
tom
 
Despite the fact that this user only has 2 posts, and this sounds horribly dangerous, I am going to proceed.

I'd say simply make recordings of each drum/cymbal, and do a frequency analysis in some piece of recording software - I know Audacty has such a thing and its free.

The only problem is, you can't say a specifically tuned drum produces a tone at X Hz - because there are so many overtones, and many of them are rather loud... perhaps not as loud as the fundamental frequency, but they are definitely there. You'd have to filter only the loudest frequency of each drum (as I am assuming you are micing the kit to set up this triggering system), running the individual mics into a computer, where the frequency analysis is happening, and then you are sending out a particular piece of data to whatever this device is you are creating.

You could also play acoustic drums, but put triggers on the acoustic heads - and then instead of using an electronic drum module, simply have some sort of hardware device that detects which was hit, and then set it to create certain events based on which trigger was activated.

Also, does this friend of yours have a decent background in computer & electrical engineering? I ask because designing the hardware to do this sort of thing is rather compilcated. Not just the coil that will presumably end up killing one of you, an audience member, or everyone in the room, but also the device that the mics / triggers hook to, that determines what goes on with the Coil.
 
Ever played a guitar with single coil pickups, while standing close to a fluorescent light, or a power transformer?

The Tesla coil is a cool idea in theory, but I don't think it's gonna work out for stage use.
 
no chance he can actually make large lightening bolts without using huge amounts of electricity first off. And anything with enough juice to look like lightening is definitely gonna be dangerous.
And I'm fairly sure he can't even do it to a significant degree with anything portable anyway. Even the largest static type generators I've seen only send sparks out a few inches.
Also, you can be sure that devices of that nature have to meet certain regulations and/or requirements.
 
I'd go with the volcanic eruption on stage spewing hot molten magma on every drum hit. But then, there's always the fiery comet on a wire. Of course a giant T-Rex that gobbles up your lead singer, spurting blood everywhere always goes over big.
 
Why don't you just invest the money in a lightshow that uses lazer systems and such? I can't imagine designing a hardware controller and a Tesla Coil was going to be cheap.
 
A friend at work pointed out that the band and audience would be okay if they were all in metal cages, fully grounded.

That seems cost effective :D

I'm sorry, I can't help but run with this - could you also setup small canons along the front of the stage that shoot flaming daggers out at the audience? That's fuckin metal
 
Ok, putting aside the whole tesla coil thing (which I think we all hope you put aside), there's a couple of ways to trigger "events" from acoustic drum hits. The best way is to use acoustic drum triggers, which are readily available, not very expensive, and easy to setup. Then you can either use a midi brain of some sort to send out midi events, and then have the controller for whatever effect you're triggering decode the midi events and fire off the appropriate solinoid, relay, whatever....., or you can forget midi, and just set up some comparitors to detect that the sensor output has crossed the threshold, and fire off whatever logic you need after that.
You could do the threshold thing with mics too, but you'd probably need to put the comparitors after preamps to not have noise issues with thresholds and false triggers.
 
Just improve the band's live show. A few areas I'd concentrate on is individual chops and collective tightness. No one will notice there's no gimmicks.
 
ez_willis said:
Just improve the band's live show. A few areas I'd concentrate on is individual chops and collective tightness. No one will notice there's no gimmicks.
Click to expand...
Exactly! Tesla coils and flames and sparks and shit like that are cover for those who can't play music and only distract from those who can.

G.
 
Guys, I don't think he means lighting bolts in the literal sense.

:D
 
Yes, We're crazy, and it probably won't work...

But, it's an idea I've had for a little while. I was inspired by a youtube vid i saw. Type "Tesla Coil Mario" into the search box, click the first one. It's awesome.

And it seems pretty safe to me :)

My general idea was to build a smallish tesla coil and house it in its own metal cage in the middle of the stage, and use it sparingly and only during crazy drum parts, etc.

I had thought of the overabundance of overtones. Would it take a HP/LP filter on each mic to get rid of any other frequencies and isolate the fundamental, or is there another way to do it?

All of the other equally crackpot ideas about volcanoes and such had me rolling on the floor. Keep them coming :)

tom
 
yeah...i don't know what's up with the doubters. i've seen people in the same room as a tesla before...

just mic the snare or whatever, run it to some sort of noise gate, and have the tesla triggered by the noise.

i don't know the electronic part, i just know a noise gate would give you control over how loud and would distinguish open and close.
 
starbuck26 said:
All of the other equally crackpot ideas about volcanoes and such had me rolling on the floor. Keep them coming :)

tom
Click to expand...

Well, if you can charge the air around your drums to 30KV/cm, you could do a wicked kewl St Elmo's fire display.
 
cusebassman said:
could you also setup small canons along the front of the stage that shoot flaming daggers out at the audience? That's fuckin metal
Click to expand...
I can't believe nobody has brought up napalm... I've heard a couple of recipes that seem easy (and cheap enough) to make... Maybe said daggers could be coated with that or, hell, why not just make a flame thrower too?:D
 
I hate bands that rely on gimmicks and light shows.

Signed,

G. Simmons.
 
...and if that doesn't scare them you could have an AK47 loaded with blanks waiting.

No club owner will let you bring a lightning bolt show intended to strike the audience. Maybe before the Great White show...with permits, not today.
 
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