Flicker in time whilst it's played over speakers - complete with single missed note to make it look live - is more like what happened, but still impressive.
from that link, for the lazy:
Solid state Tesla coils (SSTC) can generate sound using what [Ed Ward] calls pulse repetition frequency (PRF) modulation. The heat generated by the plasma flame causes rapid expansion of the surrounding air and a resulting soundwave. An SSTC can be operated at just about any frequency, so you just need to build a controller to handle it. The task is made more difficult because very few electronics are stable in such an intense EM field. [Ed] constructed a small Faraday cage for his microcontroller and used optical interconnects to deliver the signals to the Tesla coils.
I dunno, I saw that guitar tesla thing and he was doing a random on the spot solo, and it sounded and looked pretty fucking convincing. I think the technology just might exist.
The actual hook of popcorn does sound too light to be coming from a tesla coil though, maybe only the background beat that starts up in the beginning is the only tesla-made noise.
It sounds perfectly real to me. That roughness works the same as distortion on a guitar (or the tesla guitar amp in that other video).
A note played and then quickly muted (basically the short notes here) are pretty clear and only slightly "scratchy."
Hold a note longer (i.e. the background rhythm) and it sounds a lot more distorted. Hold it long enough (i.e. the background rhythm, still) and it starts to become hard to distinguish notes as they are played. That's why people that play guitar with heavy distortion learn to mute the current note before playing the next one. There's no gap between notes with this video.
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