Musicians Create Underwater Symphony

Teledyne Marine has collaborated with BetweenMusic, a Danish performance company led by musicians Leila Skovmand and Robert Karlsson, to create an underwater concert experience known as AquaSonic.

The music ensemble worked with Teledyne Marine’s hydrophones to perform all the music in AquaSonic underwater.

Water absorbs high frequencies more readily than air, and Teledyne hydrophones became crucial in overcoming this for both live performances and album recordings.

The team developed innovative and unique instruments for their submerged concerts and also had to train their singers to perform underwater, a challenge for both the singers and the audio engineers.

Laila Skovmand, BetweenMusic's Artistic Director, composer, and one of their lead singers, describes the challenge. “One of the first things I did try to sing underwater was to borrow some whale recordings to try to do the same as using the voice in the same way that they do. I mean, whales can sing much higher and much lower, but they also sing a lot in the human range. So, we just try to make the same sound.

“And, of course, it was also something that inspired us to go out into the open water and collect these reverbs with the Teledyne hydrophones. You hear it so clearly. In many ways, recording these fascinating reverbs and echoes that happen underwater that you can never hear above water was mind-blowing.”

AquaSonic is performed on stage with five performers submerged in glass water tanks playing custom-made instruments and singers performing entirely underwater. Although AquaSonic currently performs on stage and has not performed in open water yet, they do hope to do so in the future.

They are preparing to release their first album recorded with Teledyne Marine’s hydrophones sometime in 2025.