The Cokophone

[Lak]

So, because I'm a silly bastard with too much spare time, I made a Cokophone. Which is a bunch of cocacola bottles really. I made it as an experiement in generating ambient noise for recordings, like a keyboard would, but with a bit of a different unique sound. The cokophone can be blown, or struck.

The idea came when myself and two mates were sitting around drinking L&L bitters, and I blew across the top of my bottle for no particular reason, and the the other two joined in, and lo and behold we made a major triad. Then I took another mouthful, and we did it again, and it had become a minor. We laughed and were ashamed of what ridiculous music geeks we were, and then went home.

Mine was pretty rough, I used a computer mic and the program "Audiophonics guitar tuner" to tune the bottles. In case you hadn't guessed, this involves filling them with water until they make the right pitch. The computer tuner method isnt very accurate but accurate enough for me to be able to play recognisable tunes on the bottles. I picked coke because I like the timbre I get from the 'contour' (TM) bottle shape. And also because I drink shitloads of the stuff.

You get a more full, defined sound when the bottle is emptier, so when moving up in pitch I 'upgraded' to a smaller bottle as soon as it was possible. I also found you can "bend" the pitch by blowing harder, so this adds to the inaccuracy.

Following is the depth of the water measured from the surface of the table the bottle was sitting on, in centimeters. All bottles used were standard-issue modern plastic ones. As you can see, I'm still missing two notes, and I could have moved up to 390ml bottles earlier (but I didnt have enough).

---------------- 2.25 L
G 4.0
G# 6.5
A 8.5
---------------- 1.5 L
A# 3.2
B 5.4
C 8.0
C#
D 12.1
D#
E 14.8
---------------- 600 mL
F 2.0
F# 3.8
G 5.2
G# 6.6
A 8.4
A# 8.9
B 9.8
C 10.7
C# 11.8
D 12.5
D# 12.8
E 13.5
---------------- 390 mL
F 9.7
F# 10.3
G 11.0

So it covers two octaves (except the gaps obviously), the measurements ARE accurate but the pitch may not be. It sounds quite cool actually especially as ambient, droning sound in 3- or 4-part harmonies, but you'd need a room full of people to play a melody at speed. Havn't really played with striking it, for two reasons:
- no suitable drumstick-like objects around
- they'd fall over and spill water on my floor
So if you'd want a percussive cokophone you'd need to somehow fasten them to something.

If anyone wants to build one, use these measurements as a rough guide and try to fine tune the pitch, maybe with an electric guitar tuner (unless you have perfect pitch you lucky bastard). If theres a mathematical correlation (there obviously is but I dont know it), that may be easier than tuning them individually.

An interesting experiment in creating a new kind of sound. Still pretty geeky tho.

[CSflim]

Good on you.
We need a photo!

[Zephyr66]

yeah, I would love a picture of this thing

[Lak]

Sorry, but this is the only picture I have of it, its a cellphone pic:

The bottles are no longer full of water, and I don't think they're in any particular order... but oh well.

I also have this picture:

which is one of the more awesome samples of water-dwelling mold I found in one of the bottles, sitting in my sink. Those are roughly 2cm in diameter, and suprisingly solid.

Incidentally, keeping varied amounts of water in old coke bottles for a few months is an effective way to cultivate awesome water-dwelling mold... who would have thought, eh?