Lyre Bowls

Lyre Bowls are similar in all ways to the melody Bowls except in that the strings are laid out in a fan pattern.

It has always seemed to me that the strings of the Greek Lyre, radiating out, point to the planets as they circle above. Our modern scales were born in ancient Greece; the space between notes is related to the distances between the planets as measured from the earth.

For the Greeks, Music was the heard and felt presence of the songs of the planets (gods) as they danced around the earth. Their spiritual seekers saw it as a high goal to be able to hear the song, as people could in their ‘Golden Age’.

The birth-story of the Greek Lyre relates how Apollo, god of the Sun came across a tortoise shell while walking in the hills one day. Picking up the tortoiseshell he took some gut and stretching it across he began to play his music. From this image, so redolent with deeper themes the vast majority of European stringed instruments have evolved. My own experience of conjuring music into a silent form makes me feel that the planets do in one sense reach down in order that harmony may come into being.

Opinions differ, after the creation of the lyre as to whether Apollo or his son Hermes (mercury) healer/thief/messenger of the gods was the better player. Both were able to work real magic with these lyres.

Playing a Sounding Bowl with this pattern of strings is very different to playing a Melody Bowl as the notes are arranged with the deep ones central and alternating out to the high notes on the shorter strings, like African Kalimbas.

This throws one out of the usual European concept of ‘tune’ until one gets used to it, creating a space for much freer improvisation. It also encourages new tunings with two strings (opposite pairs) tuned to the same note. This can create a new sound, almost like a perspective within the note.

This style is most popular with healers and shamanic users.