the Waterphone
It is a musical instrument that can be bowed or played like percussion with a soft mallet. The body of the waterphone is made of stainless steel and the rods are made of brass. Water inside of the instrument is affecting the sound by waving and moving around. Resonance dependencies in these instruments are very complex. Playing it can be simple if you feel it, but there`s no simplicity in the way it works. Waterphone could be described as a kind of vibration machine. Its sound lasts for a long time reverberating in the coherent system of metal, air and water.
The inventor of this musical device is Richard Waters. I am putting here the address of his website with an great respect for his beautiful work : www.waterphone.com
I'm inspired by Waters`main idea but as an instrument - maker and a musician I try to reach for my own sound.
My story with the waterphone
When I was a kid, I liked experimenting with intricate sounds of diverse metal objects.Those were plenties of different objects as my grandfather had a metal workshop next to our house. It happened once, that one of my toys felt on the ground and the plastic cover got destroyed. Inside of it there was something that i may call monolithic steel kaolimba. Steel rods were attached to a solid metal disc. The ball inside were strucking the metal rods, making them produce sounds. It was a big discovery when i was intentionally able to struck the rods with the nail. The spoiled toy sounded way better than original one and it became my favorite musical toy-instrument for a long time.
When I first discovered Richard Waters` waterphone it instantly blew my mind and reminded me the joy of playing around with my first metal kaolimba which was quite similiar to the waterphone. I made a decision to take a challenge and build one by myself.
The same situation happened with building the first drum. The idea just came to me, stayed and triggered my decision to build my own instrument. My first attempt to create a waterphone worked out quite good but it was pretty far from perfection. By now I`ve created a dozen of waterphones, I`ve been experimenting a lot with materials, and tuning methods. My goal is to discover new ways and dimensions of creating sound.
Before that I have constructed many percussive instruments. I made different kinds of drums and xylophones, flutes, didgeridoos and kaolimbas. It amazes me that all that different instruments share the same matrix of physical and musical rules and one can find the connections almost everywhere.