[TCML] tcs as musical instruments...

[Jim Lux <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As I was driving to my daughter's rehearsal this afternoon, I thought 
about Bart's videos (and all the other musical TCs).. and realized that 
we should think about what kind of instrument a TC is, and my best guess 
is that it's sort of like an organ that can play only one note at a time.

There's not much in the way of dynamics.  You have to have enough "bang" 
to get a breakout, and the sound from a small spark is not a lot 
different from a big spark.  So it's like a pipe organ in that way.  You 
get big changes in volumes by adding ranks of pipes.

Can it do polyphony.. I think so, in a limited way.  You're basically 
generating a pulse stream.  And I could logically "OR" two pulse 
streams, one at "C" and one at "E" for instance, and I should hear two 
notes.  Easy to test with some .wav files

How many octaves range does it have.. you can go pretty low, but the 
loudness will drop off.  The bang size is roughly constant, so the 
acoustic power as the rep-rate goes down goes down with frequency, and 
Weber-Fechner law means that lower frequencies "sound" less loud for the 
same power.  What's the top frequency, maybe a couple octaves above 
middle C?

Can we make a TC put out a sound that's different than the sort of buzz 
we normally get.  Perhaps, if you send closely spaced double pulses? 
What does something that is, say, bang, 1 ms, bang, 9 ms, bang, 1ms, 
bang,... sound like.. Yes, about 100Hz, but there'll be some interesting 
harmonic structure that would sound different.  Then there's all the old 
techniques from early synthesizers: Two pulse trains at the same 
frequency, one with a bit of FM on it (a sort of vibrato/tremolo effect)


But here's the intriguing thing.. I've always wanted to build a setup 
with multiple TCs that can do real polyphony.  Originally, I had ideas 
of multiple rotary spark gaps a'la a Hammond organ and tone wheels 
(someone actually did this at the turn of the 20th century, I have found).

And, because I'm a spark gap kind of guy, I started building a multiple 
triggered gap.

but these days, the DRSSTC is SO much more controllable.

If you could control the RF phase (which I would imagine you could, with 
clever timing), you could phase multiple coils so that sparks would 
preferentially strike between toploads.


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