Waterphone

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Alex Wong, of The Animators, plays the waterphone with Vienna Teng at The World Cafe Live on 2007.01.21

A waterphone is a unique type of atonal acoustic musical instrument constructed largely of a stainless steel resonator "bowl" with a cylindrical "neck", containing a small amount of water, and with brass rods around the rim of the bowl. The waterphone produces a vibrant ethereal type of music sometimes classified as "ambient music."

Several sizes and design variants of the instrument are available. It is generally played in a seated position by a soloist and played by bowing or drumming and movement so as to affect the water inside, and thus the resonant characteristics of the bowl and rods. The waterphone is recognized as a true musical instrument and appears in movie sound tracks, record albums, and is used in live performance. As in the "ambient music" genre, there is no established formal notation for scribing compositions.

The waterphone is a modern invention inspired by the "Tibetan Water Drum, a round, slightly flattened, bronze, drum with an aperture in the center top," according to the inventor of the waterphone, Richard A. Waters. The waterphone in part revives the sound-producing principle of an earlier instrument called a nail violin, which also used a resonator and rods (nails), and was struck or bowed.^[1]

Contemporary classical composers who have written parts for waterphone in compositions include Sofia Gubaidulina, Tan Dun, Christopher Rouse, Carson Cooman, Andi Spicer, Andrew Carter and Todd Barton. It has also been used prominently by rock musicians Richard Barone and Alex Wong (when playing with Vienna Teng) and can be heard in music by The Harmonica Pocket.

The waterphone has been featured in the soundtracks to many movies, including The Matrix, Poltergeist, Star Trek, Dark Water (2002 film), and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as well as in Tan Dun's opera The First Emperor (2006). A sound sample can be found at the Freesound Project.

[edit] Related instruments

Armonica (glass harmonica), uses water (wet hands) on glass, invented by Benjamin Franklin (inspired by Franklin's love of water);
Nail violin;
Water organ and hydraulis;
Hydraulophone, an instrument that's like a woodwind instrument but uses water instead of air, and is played by blocking water jets emerging from a water fountain.