Oscilloscope Music | Hacker News Reader

Oscilloscope Music

oscilloscopemusic.com

136 pointsiamflimflam130 comments

In 1977 I took an old B&W TV (tubes!), took the yoke off the neck of the picture tube, and put another one on.

Then I ran the wires from the yoke to the speakers (left X, right Y) of an 8-track player that had a built-in amplifier, and popped in Wish You Were Here.

Invited some friends over, had a couple of doobs and beers, and dubbed it the Orgasmatron, after the gadget in Sleeper. We were super excited to bring the rig to a bigger party the next evening; it was awesome.

So the next evening my buddy and I are packing up the mess to bring to the party, and we start heading up the stairs from the basement lair of our family home. My friend had the TV by the top handle, leading the way.

Suddenly we hear this little ‘whoosh’ and crack sound. Sure enough, my buddy had whacked the neck of the picture tube (sticking out the open back of the TV) on the banister. He was standing there on the bottom step, frozen. I burst into laughter.

Another glorious invention that literally never made it out of the basement.

I loved how the scanning could be controlled in ways other than just the the back and forth sweeping of a boring TV picture. I loved some of the old arcade games to did this too. The nature of the scanning meant the graphics were not as "impressive", but for some reason, I enjoyed the game play over the side scrollers.

SlowMoGuys video on said topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJVpYL44jUQ

Jerobeam Fenderson is good. His "Spirals" I think is his best work. However, I think "Globetrotter" by C.Allen is damned impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2YQD8Go_Hc as is "DANCER" by the same artist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQjJZbgMw7E

Just got back from youtube with a fresh link to Chris Allen. No denying Jerobeam is the OG, but Chris does some INSANE stuff.

Edit: Look at the replay chart in the youtube player for that Dancer track. It perfectly encapsulates the ramping intensity.

Chris Allen is awesome. When Stable Diffusion was released, he had several amazing zooming morphing music videos up within a _week_. Almost a year later and they are still some of my favorite SD works.

"While we are not authorized to discuss the project specifics, we can assure you that the DANCER platform is meant exclusively for peaceful purposes. -DARPA"

Bwahahahaha. I love it.

Somewhat related: I was at Science North and they have a couple keyboards connected to a laser projector oscilloscope. I played Prelude in C (because I’m a beginner!) and it was kind of amazing to see not just the beauty of the loops and curves but how you could clearly see the progression of the chords on the wall.

I don’t feel like I’m getting any better at piano but I love, truly, how I keep “discovering” all the secrets, musically and mathematically.

Science North is a treasure! You can also see from that laser display how pleasing sounds have a stable, synchronized relationship whereas atonal key combinations do not

For a second I thought C referred to the C language.

I find it to be simpler to read than Prelude in C#. ;)

Didn't get your comment, sorry. I'm both a C# (language) and (Western) music ignoramus, sad to say :)

I first encountered this with "Oscillofun" by Atom Delta, which absolutely blew my mind at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW1ZxR71VJI

Back in the 80's, I hooked an oscilloscope up to the left/right channels of a stereo, as I'd seen it done in a radio station. Seemed like standard operating procedure. Then I put on Eno & Fripp's "An index of metals" from their album "Evening Star". The whole side of the album is allotted to this song. It's not that fun to listen to (imho). But hook it up to an oscilloscope, and the true meaning of the song appears (again, imho).

https://mixmag.net/feature/spectrogram-art-music-aphex-twin

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaTuFB5QXHo

Can someone explain to me exactly how this works? It's not the oscilloscope producing the sounds, correct? Rather the visualizations from an audio file?

EDIT: Excellent, thanks!

Most scopes have a 1kHz square wave signal output for calibration, surely all you need then are 20 filter boxes or so.

The left and right channels are connected to the oscilloscope's X and Y input.

The left and right audio channels are connected to two oscilloscope inputs to control the X and Y deflection of the trace. Think of animated Etch-A-Sketch using music.

https://piped.video/watch?v=4gibcRfp4zA

Smarter everyday has a good video about it

There's a professional version.

https://www.neoncaptain.com/

One of my most favorite demoscene tracks is `Beams of Light` by TRSI.

It's 4 channels, the front two show an animation video in an oscilloscope at X-Y mode and the rear two are the music. It's very impressive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVdWxKZVYC0

I have an oscilloscope at home and want to see these, what's the best way that doesn't involve stripping and soldering wires? The best solution I've come up with is stereo aux -> RCA adapter, then two RCA -> BNC adapters. Is there a better way of viewing these?

I'm fairly sure RCA to BNC, left -> x, right -> y is how the guy in OP does it.

you also need a very unusual DAC to view this with high fidelity--you need a high sample rate and it needs to be dc coupled.

>I have an oscilloscope at home

I'm telling you that and cables isn't the only thing you need.

Nice! Also love I love this clark track. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKYrwuxLZtY

When ChatGPT replaces the DJ at your wedding.

More probably these people have such a deep understanding of what is sound, how it works, and how to control it that their achievements make you feel so small and inferior that you have to mock their accomplishments to make yourself feel better. I'm sad for you that you cannot appreciate their work. Is it because you can't understand what it happening?

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