The first time that Laila Skovmand tried to sing underwater, it sounded awful. "There was just mainly a lot of bubble sounds coming out," says the Danish musician and composer. "The instruments that I tried underwater, I couldn't get them to sound."
But now, after almost 15 years of research and experimentation, Skovmand is preparing to perform a set of ethereal, dreamlike songs at the Sydney Festival in January under the name AquaSonic. She will be accompanied by four other musicians, all submerged in glass tanks. Between them they've figured out not only how to sing underwater, but also how to build instruments that work without air.
The first is the hydraulophone, which shoots jets of water out of several holes, which can be covered with a finger to play a note.
Then there's the crystallophone, which uses the same idea as playing on wine glasses, but instead has two glass bowls mounted on a rotating axle.
The group also developed a stringed instrument called the rotacorda, which has a nylon wheel that can be rubbed against the strings to create chords and longer notes.
But the underwater singing technique that the group has developed is perhaps the most impressive: "We go up above the surface, take air in and then we dive under," explains Skovmand. "Then you let an air bubble from the lungs come up into the mouth, and you sing through that little air bubble. Then we kind of suck it in again and we can take a new tone.
"At first, it was just short notes. After a few years of practice, we can sing beautiful melodies."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
