There’s a noise that shows up in various horror films that is employed to set a decidedly creepy mood. It’s not a “sting” that would accompany a sudden, shocking moment. It’s more of a “weird, underwater, grating wind chime noise” that would be associated with disorientation or some sort of disturbing, Hitchcockian revelation. I distinctly recall seeing some sort of documentary or extra or something on a DVD in which this noise is produced by a bizarre mechanical device but I can’t even begin to remember precisely what it looks like or what it is called.
The most readily available example I can come up with is the first five seconds of the Joe Satriani song Circles which you can listen to here.
Anyone know what this thing is or what it is called?
My personal theory (which is worth exactly what you’re paying for it right this second) is that the dissonance and tone-bending (as the water in the pan moves and changes the density of the particular regions of the 'phone that are vibrating) do something weird with our hearing centers. The only natural thing that sounds like a waterphone at all is whalesong, really, and that tends to do the same thing to me. It’s disconcerting.
After looking at the picture in the first link and not reading the description, I didn’t imagine it being played with a bow, the thing shouldn’t be that big, the guy shouldn’t be that effin creepy when he does it, it shouldn’t make that weird racket at the end like it’s coming apart. And FFS, who made that thing and said ‘yup, perfect, that’s it, that’s exactly how my new instrument is supposed to sound’.
Nope, brain bleach, I’m sure I picked up a new bottle last week, gotta be around here somewhere. Maybe I’ll just go look at pictures of spiders or something.
Heh. You’ll note it can also be played by striking it as well as bowing it. And the descriptions will tell you it was invented by Richard Waters - another weird bit of synchronicity that somebody named “Waters” comes up with something that uses a water filled resonator to achieve its effect. BTW, you can consider something called a “nail violin” to be an ancestor of the thing:
I concur. It’s because we are used to sound staying relatively constant after a reverberation. Instead, this is moving all over the place. So we have the sound of what should sound like music along with very un-musical effects. And that ambiguity is what we find creepy.
It’s been posited that this is the same reason we find anything creepy, even the uncanny valley. Part of our brain is acting in fear, while other parts can’t see what’s wrong with it. This dissonance is what we call creepy.
I just want to say again how much I love this place. I think it’s so cool that trabajábamos was able to get an answer to that question in five minutes!
I’d just like to add that if anyone knows where I could buy a clean copy of that exact Waterphone tune/sample used in the Satriani song above, or in numerous other horror scenes, I’d be grateful. I’ve loved that effect ever since I was a kid.