A short history

The search for Harmony: Sound into Form ~ Form into Sound.
Adapted from the article in Experimental Musical Instruments Vol. 6 Number 5

			Single string Sounding Bowls like this one... Click image for further details.
		Tobias at work. Click image to enlarge.

The idea of putting musical strings across a bowl occurred to me one night in October 1986 while I sat on the side of my bed meditating.
The image came into my mind of a rounded wooden bowl fitted with a taut straight string.
Initially my interpretation was to fix a gut string across a bowl made from wet wood and allow it to be stretched by the warping of the bowl as it dried. This was fraught with problems, and I immediately added a tuning peg to the system. From there grew all the different types of Sounding Bowl that now work and play in myriad situations around the world.

Looking a little deeper the true origins of my Sounding Bowls go back at least ten years before that.
When I first began turning bowls in 1978 I found the process of creating their curved forms so satisfying, that my hobbies of playing the piano poorly and writing bad poetry went by the board and all my creative energy went into exploring bowl forms.
The bowl form is, for me an allegory for the human soul. The bowl possesses an inner space, a facing edge or rim, and a partially seen partially unseen outer form including the base that rests on the ground. Correspondingly, the soul has its inner space, a face it projects to society, and a partly seen and known, partly unknown relationship with the natural world by which it is supported.
Thus, seeking harmony of form is, for me allegorical for seeking inner creative harmony and development. The concept of an archetypal harmony of form fascinated me.
Following philosopher/craftsman Professor David Pye's statement that a form either sings or is eternally silent, I spent years trying to create forms so intrinsically harmonious that they could almost be heard to sing (or hum) where they rested.
By 1986 I began to notice acoustic effects from the inner spaces of some bowls. One piece was sitting on the piano. The wood, still green and sap filled, was drying. Suddenly it split, making a sound so musical that two rooms rang for a second or so.
This set me wondering, till the answer came that night on the bedside.

Much later I realised that music had gone underground, working its way into the forms of each piece and had resurfaced with the fitting of strings onto those forms. ~ Sound becoming form, and sound emerging from form. ~ The pursuit of harmony as the theme uniting the whole process.
A time of investigation then began. Deep-and-narrow bowls, wide-and-shallow bowls, smaller and larger rim overhangs, thick bowls and thin, all added their suggestions. For years there was no simple unifying formula of shape that I could isolate to guarantee a good sound. Now it seems that this acoustic effect is strongest where the interior curve follows the Golden (or Fibonacci) Spiral. I also find that each bowl has to be individually felt. The sound that is wanted has to be heard within the soul and then sought in the form as it is being made.

The deeper the form of this curve the more intimate the sound becomes. Some of these deep bowls are used in the most difficult therapeutic situations; such as with maladjusted youths.
The more open or shallow the form the more inclusive of other listeners the sound becomes. Some of these shallow Sounding Bowls have been used by performers to throw their voice out to an audience.

There are several counts on which the Sounding Bowls are unique in the history of world music. Other cultures have produced instruments of vaguely similar design but none where strings sound from the inside space outwards rather than from outside the space inwards.
Most stringed instruments rely on a box resonator. This might be as sophisticated as a violin or as simple as a zither but the nature of any box is to give the sound of the instrument an even spread into the space around it.

Sounding Bowls resound from an open resonator. This gives them a distinct area of resonance that radiates forward from the instrument, focussed into an area over the strings. The shape of this area is like the bud of a flower. When the ears of the player are within this area the sound is so intimate that with a little attention the sound even of one’s own breathing can be heard whispering into one’s ears. This focussed resonance picks up every nuance of the string sounds made by the player and involves them in a deep relationship with the instrument and with their own selves.

The deepest of my Sounding Bowls have fully curved over walls giving a secret space up under the rim and an outside shape in which the wall flows over into the inside shape with no break for a rim. Typically these are about 1:4 depth to diameter or even 1:3. The bud shaped resonance on these is small and intense.

The shallower Sounding Bowls are mostly about 1:5 – 1:6 depth to diameter with wave-curved rims distinct from the outer shape. The shallower the spiral curve is made, the larger and more open more open the bud shape becomes.
On these the string-tuning system is simpler, making them very robust and dependable. These can be made deeper or shallower for specific needs, even down to 1:8 for a vibrant and open sound.

This means that there are now three or four distinct types of Sounding Bowl. Each and every one is unique, hand made with great care, and signed by myself. Each and every one has a life time guarantee.

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