You know Toto’s Africa. You love Toto’s Africa. Now, prepare to listen to Toto’s Africa like you’ve never heard it before.
YouTuber Franzoli Electronics has combined science with music in a pretty unexpected way, by playing the 1981 hit on a pair of Tesla coils.
For those of you who have forgotten your high school physics lessons, Tesla coils are electrical resonant transformer circuits that create high-voltage, low-current, high frequency alternating-current electricity. Designed by Nikola Tesla in 1891, Tesla coils are mainly found in museums nowadays, but they used to be used in everything from radio transmitters to medical equipment.
As a by-product of generating electricity, the Tesla coils also happen to make a sound affected by the current. It’s this feature that Franzoli Electronics decided to harness to produce this unique cover version of the Toto classic.
Explaining the science behind the magic, the YouTuber wrote:
The main loud music really comes from the tesla coil sparks. They are literally playing the music due to the programmed phase, pulse width and firing frequency!
So, there are no speakers, no audio / video special effects. It looks even better in person and sounds almost the same, just without the beat / percussion backing track.
The sound itself is pretty impressive, but it’s made even better by the electricity beams generated by the coils, producing some cool lightning that wouldn’t look out of place in an actual music video.
