Bowls and gongs

The teaching

As the players' craft of bells, bowls, gongs and overtone song teaches it.

How a bowl sings

A struck bowl rings because its rim flexes in and out in several patterns at once, each with its own pitch. The lowest gives the main note, and above it sound partials that are not tuned to it as a string's overtones are, which gives a bowl its shimmering, bell-like colour. Where two patterns sit very close in pitch they beat against each other, and the note seems to swell and fade: the slow wah of a good bowl. Water poured into a bowl lowers its note, and when the bowl sings the surface of the water trembles and can throw up a ring of droplets.

Playing the rim

To make a bowl sing, rest it flat on the open palm or on a cushion so that it can move freely, and draw a wooden or leather-wrapped stick steadily around the outside of the rim, pressing lightly, with the wrist turning and the arm still. The stick grips and slips against the metal many times a second, as a wet finger does on a wine glass, and the note builds. Too fast, and the stick rattles against the rim; too light, and it never catches. Players often strike the bowl once softly first and then begin to circle, so that the rubbing feeds a note already ringing.

Bells in the temples

In Buddhist temples the standing bowl bell, the rin or kin of Japan, marks the start and end of sitting and the turns of the chanting, and the number of strokes tells the assembly what comes next; the wooden fish keeps the beat of the sutras. In Tibetan ritual the hand bell, the drilbu, is held in the left hand and the vajra in the right: the bell is wisdom and emptiness, the vajra method and compassion, and they are sounded together. On New Year's Eve the great bells of Japanese temples are struck a hundred and eight times, one stroke for each of the passions that trouble the mind.

Listening to the bell

The bell's sound is itself a meditation. In the Shurangama Sutra the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara tells how he reached awakening through hearing, by turning the hearing back to hear its own nature, and the sutra names this the best of all the methods it lists. Thich Nhat Hanh taught a simpler form for daily life: when the bell sounds, stop, breathe in and out three times, and listen until the sound has wholly gone before going on. The practice is to follow the sound to its end and rest in the quiet it leaves.

The gong

A gong is a disc of bronze hung by cords and struck with a soft beater, and its sound depends on its shape. A gong with a raised boss at its centre gives a clear note, as in the gamelan of Java and Bali, where the great gong sounds once at the end of each long cycle of the music and the smaller gongs mark the parts within it. A flat gong, the tam-tam, gives no single note but a wash of tones that swells after the stroke as the energy spreads into higher patterns, the bloom that players wait for. Chinese opera gongs are made so that their pitch slides up or down after each stroke.

Overtones

Every note of a voice or a string is made of many: a fundamental, and above it the harmonic series, at two, three, four and five times its frequency and on upward. The second harmonic sounds an octave above the fundamental, the third a fifth above that, the fourth two octaves above the fundamental, and the fifth a major third above that. Normally they blend into one tone and are heard only as its colour. Shape the mouth so that one of them is strongly reinforced, and it stands out as a note of its own.

Overtone singing

That is the art of the throat singers of Tuva and Mongolia. A singer holds a low note and shapes the mouth, tongue and lips so that a single harmonic rings out above it like a whistle or a flute, and moves the tongue to play a melody on the harmonics. Tuvan singers name several styles: khoomei, the general art and its softer middle style; sygyt, the high whistling style; kargyraa, the deep growl in which a second set of folds in the throat vibrates below the voice; and others such as borbangnadyr, the rolling style, and ezengileer, with the rhythm of the stirrup.

Tibetan monks of the Gyuto and Gyume tantric colleges chant in a voice so deep that a note sounds an octave below the ordinary voice, with a high overtone above it, so that each monk seems to sing a chord. These are disciplines learned over years from a teacher. A learner keeps the volume low, never pushes, and stops at any hoarseness or pain in the throat.

The sound bath

In a sound bath, a modern custom, people lie on mats while bowls, gongs and other instruments are played around them, usually for about an hour, moving from soft to fuller sound and back to silence. A good player keeps the sound gentle, plays the gong from a distance and leaves long silences. Anyone with a hearing aid, tinnitus, epilepsy, a pacemaker or a pregnancy tells the player first, and anyone may move away or leave if the sound grows uncomfortable, because loud sound can harm hearing for good. The bell traditions teach these instruments as calls to attention. No bowl or gong has been shown to heal, and none takes the place of a doctor's care.