Axehole

One of the first things that caught our eyes at the NAMM Summer Session 2006 was an unusual MIDI-controlled organ that features Tito’s Vodka bottles as resonators. The organ played jaunty polkas, and could also be controlled using a MIDI control keyboard mounted to the front.
The organ is self-contained, with an air pump controller, lighting and a walnut enclosure on casters. The controller triggers shots of air above the bottles, accompanied by bright LEDs that indicate the active bottle.

The unusual organ is a project of Peterson Electro-Musical Products, which makes a variety of specialty strobe tuners and organ components. According to Peterson, the origin of the Vodka Bottle Organ stretches back to 1798, on the island of Helgoland (formerly Danish territory, now German).

A church congregation was tired of paying for an organ tuner to sail out to the island every month to tune the church organ. The pastor, who was tired of hearing the complaints, commissioned an ex-mercenary soldier/organ builder from Eisleben, (later East Germany) called Johann Samuel Kühlewein, to build an organ which would not go out of tune due to changes in temperature or weather conditions.

Kühlewein built an organ using bottles instead of standard organ pipes and using sealing wax to fine tune the bottles. This organ spent a long life on the island until it became depopulated in the late 1800s and the organ fell into disrepair.

200 years and 4500 miles later in 1998, Peterson was preparing for their 50th anniversary celebrations and one of their organ designers, Gary Rickert, had the idea, to build an organ that played bottles. He set about working on weekends and late into the night, experimenting with different bottle sizes and shapes. Part of this time was surely consumed with consuming the contents of the various bottles, though…..

Together with woodshop supervisor Joe Farmer & cabinet maker Bill Bernahl they tried several different kinds of designs and created the organ.

Vodka Bottle Organ Features:

• The sound is actually produced by blowing air over the tops of real bottles.
• They tuned it using the company’s Strobe Tuners.
• They emptied the bottles themselves.
• You don’t have to keep re-tuning the bottles due to evaporation. They use a mineral oil as a tuning medium, because it doesn’t evaporate. An epoxy is used on permanent installations.
• You can play it with a keyboard or as a MIDI device.
• It takes about 2 months to make a Bottle Organ, unless its a custom job with fancy features. (No word from Peterson on how much of that time involves drinking the vodka.)

The Peterson’s Vodka Bottle Organ was created using dozens of bottles of Tito’s Vodka, a spirit handmade in Austin, making it all the more amazing that the carts’ angles are straight, the organ is in tune and that it plays at all.