ABSTRACT
By any of several measures, the Waterphone is one of the most successful of new acoustic instruments. The inventor and builder of the Waterphone is Richard Waters of Sebastopol, California. The Waterphone as Richard makes it today is a refinement of the idea that originally took shape through the sansas and water drums. The acoustic principles are the same; the materials, formal details, and construction methods are considerably advanced. By bowing the Waterphone’s rods at different points along their length, one can isolate different overtones as the sounding pitch. As the Waterphone is usually played, the stainless steel body serves primarily as a resonator for vibrations generated in the rods. But the two are not really so very separate or independent in their functions. Their operation is highly interactive. This is one of the keys to the extraordinary acoustic effect of the instrument.
