ArcAttack’s musical Tesla coils (shocking!)

From Austin, Texas: An advanced composition of Tesla coils, robotic drums, and a computer controlled, self-resonating pipe organ makes ArcAttack and Resonance Studios one wildly electrifying group of sounds. Their main venue is the club/dance/spirit scene and I could definitely picture ArcAttack performing downtown with some high budget videography (as if the 10ft electricity-arcs weren’t captivating enough). ArcAttack has a sound distinct from anything I’ve ever heard before. The video below was created by ArcAttack and Resonance Studios (more on them later):

An exclusive interview with Giovanni DiPrima of ArcAttack:

The Oddstrument Collection: Who is ArcAttack?

Giovanni: ArcAttack is a four man piece comprised of myself, my brother Joseph DiPrima, Oliver Greaves and Tony Smith. Initially, the “Singing Tesla Coils” were created by Joe and Oliver, while Tony and I wrote most of the music. We are all musicians, but Joe and Oliver have been busy fine tuning their design. As of now we are all working on music. ArckAttack has been around for a couple of years with just Oliver and Joe at the helm of its creation. Joe and Oliver were too busy working on the coils design so Tony and I started collaborating on music, but they were in Austin and I was in Chicago. One night, the day before a show, my internet went out, which was also the three month aniversary of me and my girlfriend at that time. I basically told her “hey baby, the Tesla coils need me” and left driving around at 3am to find a wifi spot to upload all the music I had worked on that week. About 2 hours of uploading in a big boy restaurant parking lot, I decided it might be a little bit smoother if I just moved down with them. After I moved down and being able to write music with the coils 10 feet in front of me, things got smoother and we started playing more shows. One of the main questions people ask is: “What do you guys call yourselves?” Well, “Nicky Tesla’s Blues Explosion” didn’t stick, so we decided to go with the name “ArcAttack.”

TOC: Who is Resonance Studios?

Giovanni: Resonance Studios is run by our close friend Craig Newswanger. We toyed around with the idea of a robotic drum kit with Craig and how cool it would be, and bam, one day before a show he calls us up and says “hey I got the drum kit done.” The pipe organ you also see was built by Craig. Its a controlled feed-back pipe organ, and basically each pipe has a mic at the top and a speaker at the bottom. The pipes are all cut to different lengths and when you turn on one of the mics, it feeds back into its self and resonates at whatever frequency the pipe is cut to.

TOC: What do you guys do in the real world?

Giovanni: Joe works as an engineer at the University of Texas, Oliver works as an electronics technician at Symtex, Tony is a trained assassin, and I’m a freelance audio engineer.

TOC: Who/what controls the motors in the Resonance Studio/ArcAttack video? Is the sequence programmed? Can a human control the sounds on-the-fly?.

Giovanni: As of right now everything is midi controlled and prerecorded. Our set is more dance music than anything else but everything can be played live via any midi interface, and we have recently acquired enough equipment to perform a live set with the coils. Eventually it will be a mix of a high voltage Disc Jockey (HVDJ) setup and a high voltage rock show. We have some other musical instruments we are working on that are pretty hush hush right now that will be used as well.

TOC: Is a tesla coil on stage a hazard? Can people get electricuted? What are the safety issues involved? Any stories?

Giovanni: Yes. Yes. Yes. Its amazing that really loud sparks coming out of a crazy looking electrical device aren’t enough to deter people. As far as electrocution, due to the high frequency nature of the coil, if you were to get zapped by them it wouldn’t effect your nervous system like a taser would, but it wouldn’t be pretty either. We were thinking about getting tasers for crowd control, but that would just be redundant.

TOC: How does a tesla coil produce the different notes? Can you play a tesla coil, say, from a keyboard?

Giovanni: The way our coils work is by turning the spark itself into an actual speaker. Say you place a sine wave of 440hz out of a speaker. That speaker will move 440 times a second to create the pressure waves that we hear. Instead of a moving diaphragm, we basically have an on/off spark. so we play the same 440hz tone through the coil and the spark will stop and start 440 times, and each time it starts it ionizes the air creating pressure waves. It doesn’t sound as clean as a tone generator, but we were pretty much going for the opposite of that. The actual midi data is interpreted by a custom programmed micro controller, which takes midi note numbers and converts the data into a PWM output, which is sent to the Tesla coil through a fiber optic interface. Any midi instrument can be hooked to this controller, like a midi keyboard or saxophone.

TOC: What is your electricity bill like and how does a music venue incorporate your high-voltage needs?

Giovanni: Eh, it’s a little higher than a normal house-hold. One time we forgot to pay the bill due to A.D.D. and com-ed sent out a tech to turn off our power right before a show. He came to our house and when we showed him what we were doing, he laughed and said, “well I guess I’m not turning off your power” He said also if we ever had any more trouble paying the bill let him know and he would make sure we would get some leeway. The funny part is we had the money, we’re just idiots like that.

TOC: Do you know of any healing properties from your tesla’s music? Both from the sound itself and the EMF it produces?

Giovanni: As far as healing properties go, I’m not aware of any. Joe had to jump start his car with one at one point. We also roast Twinkies on it on occasion. The experience is more healthy for the soul.

TOC: Do you guys have any interesting stories from your live performances?

Giovanni: We played a show in Houston that went until five in the morning. The cops came to shut us down and Joseph had to tackle a cop so he didn’t run into the coil. After we explained what the coils do, they asked us to turn them back on for them. When we first started doing it, our neighbors would come over to complain about the noise and then after they saw what we we’re doing they asked us to turn it up. It’s really neat hearing “that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!” on a regular basis. The fan base is a little different from when I played in normal rock band. A bit nerdier but way more into it. We’re planning on doing two different performances. One for more of a dance club feel in which its just dance music with the coils, and the other a full rock live performance.

<3 Giovanni and the rest of the gang at ArcAttack.

Websites: ArcAttack, Resonance Studios

Don’t forget to bookmark and subscribe to The Oddstrument Collection RSS FEED.