Classic demos from the demoscene are all about showing off one’s technical prowess, with a common side order of a slick banging soundtrack. That’s precisely what [BUS ERROR Collective] members [DJ_Level_3] and [Marv1994] delivered with their prize-winning Primer demo this week.
This demo is a grand example of so-called “oscilloscope music”—where two channels of audio are used to control an oscilloscope in X-Y mode. The sounds played determine the graphics on the screen, as we’ve explored previously.
The real magic is when you create very cool sounds that also draw very cool graphics on the oscilloscope. The Primer demo achieves this goal perfectly. Indeed, it’s intended as a “primer” on the very artform itself, starting out with some simple waveforms and quickly spiraling into a graphical wonderland of spinning shapes and morphing patterns, all to a sweet electronic soundtrack. It was created with a range of tools, including Osci-Render and apparently Ableton 11, and the recording performed on a gorgeous BK Precision Model 2120 oscilloscope in a nice shade of green.
If you think this demo is fully sick, you’re not alone. It took out first place in the Wild category at the Revision 2025 demo party, as well as the Crowd Favorite award. High praise indeed.
We love a good bit of demoscene magic around these parts.
Thanks to [STrRedWolf] for the tip!
Really cool! Had an Amiga demo vibe from the late 80’s and early 90’s.
I love this. Fantastic work!
This is so cool. Maybe it could feed a pair of galvo mirrors, and we could use frickin’ lasers!
Or skip the galvos and put electrodes into a shark and mount the laser on its …
THiS POST HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED PER ORDER OF PETA !!!
I very much doubt you´ll find affordable fast enough galvos for this…
Look, Ma, I’m famous!
Yes, you are. Great work.
It would be interesting to see a “making of” – presumably they’ve created some tooling to help out.
This is awesome, I wonder if there’s ‘scope (pun intended) to use the Z/Intensity as well with some function of the L&R channel
Responding to the intensity suggestion…
In college (many many) years ago, I was a lab assistant in an Industrial Engineering department. To support an human factors Engineering Design class, the hardware guy built a switch box with a cutout fitting the display of a Tektronix 525 Oscope we placed behind it. We defocused the beam to a diameter of a few millimeters to prevent burn.
We had an ADC and the switch box allowed us to detect swhich of the buttons was pressed.
I implemented a bit of software (Dec PDP-8/L, two DACs) to draw a 5×8 character by parking the beam for a few milliseconds at the position of each lit dot. We had a variable scan rate (imagine “1” vs “8”).
It would have been an interesting experiment to implement a variable-park-time setting to challenge the experimental subject by changing the presented character’s brightness.
It was a glorious project, allowing an 18-year-old student to do something “real” in school.
While this is possible, it requires three digital to analog converters, so it wouldn’t work with a standard sound card. I think where you see variations in intensity in the video, this is effected with changes in beam scan speed, which is the proportional to slew rate, or the first derivative of the changing voltage. Slower rise and fall rates -> slower beam motion -> brighter appearance.
Most desktop PC sound cards support at least 6 channels. The modern ones tend to skimp out on ports, so you may have to remap a mic or front panel port though.
So how does this work? Is it the signal that is visualised using the oscilloscope and music added later, or is the music the signal? Hoe does someone do this? Can I learn this? Amazing. Respect.
Music is the signal, which is the amazing part. Music is split into two channels, one controlling the x axis and the other the y axis.
The concept can be understood from the beginning of the demo – first a single sine wave is played on the y axis channel; this shows as a vertical line with the size corresponding to the amplitude (volume) of the wave. Then the x axis starts a sine wave which spreads the y axis signal out horizontaly, with different harmonics changing how that looks. Then everything gets magical and the creators show off some true virtuoso artistry
It’s achieved ultimately by piping two audio channels into a ‘scope
Can’t help with learning how to do this (these guys are clearly extremely talented individuals, and have spent a lot of time getting good with this technique), but DJ Level 3 is in the comments for this article so maybe he could help :)
Just adding to make it clear; the two audio signals are the left and right stereo signals.
Has someone finally broken Jerobeam Fenderson’s code, or is he in the background here somewhere? I couldn’t find any link between Jerobeam and Bus Error Collective or DJ Level 3. Anyway, the most important part of oscilloscope music is the music, and the music here is good.
We actually invited Jerobeam to join us for this project, but he had prior commitments, sadly.. He’s no stranger to the demoscene, either.. If I remember correctly, he attended Evoke some years ago.
I’ve downloaded the flac, took the dust out of my old analog scope and split a RCA cable to connect it to my stereo to have the full experience.
It looks glorious! Its a masterpiece. Congratulations to the creator
This is spectacular. I guess the only way not to be impressed by this is if you don’t understand what this takes.
There’s a download link in the video description for a lossless version of the audio files. I tried them out on one of my analog scopes and it works great.
So you just play the left & right channels into X & Y on an oscilloscope and get this visual result?
Correct. (You may of course need to switch the cables, if it appears rotated 90 degrees..)
Yes, just make sure you don’t leave a bright dot on the screen for long.
Tool to Make demo?
https://oscilloscopemusic.com/software/oscistudio/
That was sick. Good music, cool ashetic, and the visual and audio glitchiness adds to the whole effect. That being said, my gut says the audio and video would be so far apart in the frequency domain that they’re practically seperate signals. I may be mistaken about that.
Accurate Morse code at the end.
I’ve heard of this kind of thing, but this one goes further. My own very limited journey into graphics was by using the analog ‘scope in X-Y-Z mode (Z being for intensity), which I show at http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?p=15348#p15348 . I have not come across any digital ‘scopes you can do that with.
Jules Antoine Lissajous would have loved to have seen this!
Lots of sound in the rear channels with a basic surround setup! I wonder weather this would show well through the deflection coils on a x-y vector game display? Quite impressive.