Using Sounding Bowls

- How does one play a Sounding Bowl?
- Playing Tunes, lullabies, folk songs, improvisation
- Tuning your Sounding Bowl

What sort of usage have Sounding Bowls seen?

At first Sounding Bowls were something I made simply because I was excited by the idea. I felt it might be possible to stretch a bridge between sculpture and music.

A downside of this was that almost no-one knew what to do with or how to classify them, Galleries I sold in did not know how to tune them, musicians found those first few too basic to take seriously. An upside was that after the first few some people began to comment that they felt there was therapeutic potential in them.

The first serious uptake on this was Rachel Verney RMTh who bought one on behalf of Sobell House hospice in Oxford. There Dr. Colin Lee was astonished at the results he achieved with the little 7 string Melody Bowl Rachel had chosen and commissioned a bigger one. With this he found immediately that he was getting responses from patients in ways and situations in which other musical instruments were not effective.

Dr Lee held a conference for fellow music therapists devoted to these experiences and Sounding Bowls began to be used more widely. That was in 1991.

Since then Dr Lee’s early discovery that Sounding Bowls are uniquely effective has been re-proven by very many therapists in very many situations. Music Therapy in Hospices and special needs education was quickly followed by oncology, post-trauma care, psychiatric and high security psychiatric units. Nearly all NHS institutions, nearly all feeding back remarkable results.

A recent example was a therapist at a hospice. Newly appointed she went from room to room explaining what music therapy could offer the patients. Each one thanked her and declined, ‘not being musical’. The next day she went again from room to room and simply held up her Sounding Bowl. Every single patient asked for more. A one hundred percent turn around.

Another recent example was a therapist appointed to a hospice in which music therapy was well established. As an experienced music therapists he had his own favourite techniques and instruments which had been very successful at previous appointments. The reason he contacted me was to see if I could tell him what I had stirred into the Sounding Bowls the hospice used that made everyone want to work with them and not with his established ways. Also why, when he sat down to play them one evening had he been so drawn in that he had carried on till the small hours. ‘Could I explain the magic to him?’ Could I? Not really, I told him how I worked and what my desires were during making but beyond that it is a mystery to me just why Sounding Bowls create such magic in so many situations and places around the world.

This magic that arises where Sounding Bowls are used is discussed more in the articles section.

Sound Healers and therapists, spiritual healers, self healers and meditants have also taken up Sounding Bowls with enthusiasm and some of the remarkable feedback comes from these fields, but more of that elswhere

How does one play a Sounding Bowl?

Plucking the strings is the most common way of using Sounding Bowls. Some people occasionally use light-weight string-hammers. This technique is borrowed from the Indian Santoor or American Dulcimer players, but the favourite mode remains plucking.

There are many ways to pluck a string. Some people use a plectrum, but while this technique is common amongst guitarists most stringed instruments are finger-plucked and most people prefer to do this with Sounding Bowls.

Guitarists, Harpists and Lyre players use distinct plucking techniques. Mostly guitarists put the finger tip under the string and raise it up, releasing the string on the pass. This gives a bright tone and allows fast action.

The more robust technique that creates the volume required of a harp is to bend the string between thumb and finger, releasing both simultaneously. This creates a very strong sound with harder overtones that some may find pleasing. The subtler technique employed by Lyrists is to place the finger over the string and roll it downwards so the string is part plucked and part stroked. This gives a softer tone more open to expressive intonation. I have seen Sounding Bowl players using all of these techniques.

One of the great advantages of Sounding Bowls is that with no ‘established’ history there is no one to tell you that you must not do it this way or that, no one to rapp your fingers with a baton for doing it ‘wrong’, for there is no right and wrong of Sounding Bowl playing. The right way to play is the technique that gives you the greatest satisfaction and raises the sort of sound you want to make.

Many instruments have a huge history of technique that has become a weapon of standardisation, Sounding Bowls have less than twenty years of history and the notion that the technique you prefer is the best technique has been fostered during this history. Therefore I emphasise that it is your ear that tells you how best to play this instrument, your heart that responds to this tone or that and says yes or no.

Thus it becomes play in the sense of child’s play; that one plays With the Sounding Bowl and learns from that how joy filled music arises. Frankly I only ‘learnt to play’ my Sounding Bowls years after I started making them and still today my playing technique is rudimentary compared to many of my customers, but that does not stop me enjoying a little play from time to time.

Making Music on a Sounding Bowl?

Using the techniques above it takes only a very little practice to find which strings sound good together and discover the moods that arise with the different intervals.

Beyond that you may wish to play songs you know, or learn knew ones from written music. Sounding Bowls with 7 or more strings are set up for playing tunes on. Melody Bowls are the easiest to play tunes with. The Radiant pattern of stringing used in the Lyre Bowls etc is more confusing for those who have not been trained in African music making. Those with 7 strings are set to a pentatonic scale such as ancient cultures all over the world have used and in some cases still do use. Lullabies, airs and laments from the Shetland Isles tradition, from native American music, from Balinese or Japanese folklore can all be played.

9 strings or more make more modern music available. Most songs go one note out of the octave and the 9 string Melody Bowl accommodates that. Learning to play songs takes only a little practice. It can help to apply little stickers to the bowl edge naming the string notes while you are learning. Some of my children used this technique, others prefer drawing the pattern of the song on paper under the strings and following that.

Personally, though I play little it is mostly improvisation I play when I do. Exploring the intervals and combining them into ‘tunes’ that come and go like a breeze suits me best. It is when I play to my children that I play tunes. They like little better than a Sounding Bowl lullaby after story to waft them into dreamland on safe wings.

Tuning your Sounding Bowl

Every Sounding Bowl comes with comprehensive tuning instructions and adjusting the tuning for songs in different keys takes only seconds. Any scale can be set on your Sounding Bowl from the chart provided and the electronic tuning aid that comes as an extra provides a scale with needle and note read out that tells you exactly where you are and how little up or down you need to go with the key. The major/minor scales of modern music can be supplemented by the modes of earlier times, each mode has a particular mood of soul and exploring these can really enrich one’s musical meditations. Instructions for tuning the modes are part of the tuning chart that comes with every Sounding Bowl.