I'm a Gong Freak and I admit it

[soaring crane]

Say hello to my newest best friend, I call him "Shui", to go with his Partner, "Feng":

 

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Shui (and the Harmonie gong stand, plus a collection of gorgeus hammers) got delivered the day before yesterday. I bought the whole set  through Ebay from a very sweet person. The 95cm gong is from a special smithy in Wuhan, commissioned by Peter Hess. It's thicker-walled and more resonant than the more mass-produced gongs (at least the ones I've had and played in the past). Shui is the perfect name for this one because the tone is so deep and thick, like falling asleep on the seafloor. But he moves a lot of air, and rings for a long, long time and has overtones that fly straight to heaven.

 

Did I mention that I really love this gong? Need I say it? 

[Marblehead]

Yes, that is one hellova gong.

 

From the perspective I could view it, it looks very well made.

 

Nice too that it is hand made.  It will always be unique and special.

[soaring crane]

Yes, that is one hellova gong.

 

From the perspective I could view it, it looks very well made.

 

Nice too that it is hand made. It will always be unique and special.

Yeah the wuhan gongs are always hand hammered and they all have their special resonance and sweet spots. This one is actually more consistent than the standard models.

 

Paiste and other big companies make gongs that are used for concert settings, orchestra percussionist etc. They're extremely well made, and very expensive, but too "clean", too perfect for my needs.

[Marblehead]

They're extremely well made, and very expensive, but too "clean", too perfect for my needs.

Yes, that is another consideration regarding being special and unique.

[soaring crane]

Concert gongs are hammered, I'm pretty sure all real gongs are hammered, they're all bronze. But those are"tuned". The same thing is true with singing bowls. There are perfect ones out there, but they're boooooring. It's the imperfections that create space for the spirit. Just like people :-)

[Wells]

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Edited May 10, 2016 by Wells

[soaring crane]

I'm sure your neighbours will love it to...

Haha :-D the neighbors think I'm some kind of exorcist. Which of course I am, but not the kind they're thinking

[soaring crane]

The6gong is for Klangerlebnisse. Do you know a suitable English word for that?

[Wells]

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Edited May 10, 2016 by Wells

[soaring crane]

Sounds horrible doesn't it? Just the German word Klang is hard to translate satisfyingly. The English sounds sterile in comparison. To my ears anyway

[Marblehead]

The English sounds sterile in comparison. To my ears anyway

But you've been listening to your gong.

[soaring crane]

When I hear the word "klang," my mind interprets it as "really noisy!"

 

oh, RV, you're so right, lol. That word is pretty harsh in English. In the original, it's much softer, the 'a' is pronounced 'ahh' and the 'k' is softer in German (or, in my local dialect, anyway, it's more like a 'G')

 

Zoom -- here's the original ebay Auktion. Im the englishcoach who won it :-)

[Chang]

[soaring crane]

oh yessssss... I've seen that before, excellent stuff! :-)

[blue eyed snake]

oh, RV, you're so right, lol. That word is pretty harsh in English. In the original, it's much softer, the 'a' is pronounced 'ahh' and the 'k' is softer in German (or, in my local dialect, anyway, it's more like a 'G')

 

gives me an idea where in germany you live 

 

dutch is about the same word: klank instead of klang, and i don't know a better translation but sound doesn't give the right feeling. In dutch singing bowls are translated as klank schalen

 

for me, the sound of such a big gong, especially such a beautiful one, i imagine that is what you'd hear when a very large tree is singing.

 

congrats and enjoy!

[soaring crane]

Beautiful limage, BES, thank you :-))) Tree singing... yesssss! The deep roots, the high branches, joining heaven and earth and taking all who wish to join along for the ride :-)

 

In German, singing bowls are, of course, Klangschalen. I live in Northern Bayern, natch. Glangschoalln haha

 

This is Feng/Wind gong:

 

 

I have a 60cm Feng (also a 60cm and 50cm Tam Tam, same style as the one I just bought)

I'd like to add a larger Feng to my set.

[Nungali]

I covert my neighbours gong ( up there ^ ).

 

I had a wonderful Gong experience. When I was a little fellah my Dad took me to the Sydney museum, They had this amazing thing along a wall in a glass case, all shiny, metallic and exotic - it was a gamelan orchestra ... it just fascinated me.

 

I would return over the years to that ,museum and I would always visit that display and admire it .  The two large gongs at the back really attracted me.

 

Many years later ( about 10 years ago ) we had the 'Global Music Carnival' going in town. There was a gamelan group there from Sydney Uni. They were doing a workshop and invited people to have an instrument. I went along and things looked strangely familiar, they said the gamelan was a present from the  Sydney Museum as the Indonesian government gave them a new one

 

 

I chose the two large gongs, we all got a quick lesson and the conductor led us through playing a simple piece .

 

Ahhh ... I was in heaven that day.  Playing those two giant gongs .. and what a sound they had ! 

 

Standing between  them and playing them .....   

 

Edited February 21, 2015 by Nungali

[Nungali]

Pink Floyd live at Pompeii 

 

start @ 3.00

 

 

Edited February 21, 2015 by Nungali

[soaring crane]

Pink Floyd live at Pompeii 

 

start @ 3.00

 

I know it well :-) It gets mentioned often when I play my gongs.

 

note that that isn't a very good gong. It's some kind of fake feng gong or something, brass for sure. And slamming a gong like that isn't the way to get the spirit to come out. That's how you get it to hide.

 

Still an awesome, awesome perfomance

[Nungali]

I know it well :-) It gets mentioned often when I play my gongs.

 

note that that isn't a very good gong. It's some kind of fake feng gong or something, brass for sure. And slamming a gong like that isn't the way to get the spirit to come out. That's how you get it to hide.

 

Still an awesome, awesome perfomance

 

Yep ... my experience was with bigger and better gongs, a large padded soft striker and a variety of taps,  rebounds and sliding glancing blows to create a   glooOOOOOOOOO  oo  oo  ssshhhhh   ing sound  (not that it can de described in words    )

 

 I started to get a bit cheeky and add some flourishes (just by varying the gentle striking technique ) during the workshops latter performance ... the conductor immediately gave me the eye ...  'Oh no, whats this guy going to do'  ... but I kept it very subtle and tried to keep the variations in line of what I felt from the music, eventually he started to smile at me when I did it, 

 

 

Man!  I'd love to have another go at that again.

 

 

This looks fun too ! 

 

[silent thunder]

I can just imagine the resonance emanating outward... wow!

 

My personal take on klang is 'penetrating sound', which can include either, or both, volume and resonant intensity of vibration (especially on the lower end bowls and gongs). 

 

I like what you said and also really appreciate the 'imperfections' in my bowl.  Like water flowing over stone, the right break in the stream can be the catalyst for exceptional resonance and awareness of being.  Transcendent.

[soaring crane]

Well, I had a chance to experiment with "Shui" yesterday evening at a Qigong center in a very nice, spacious room. It was quite lovely. I was playing, trying different strikers and patterns, and my friends were enjoying it. Then one of them walked to the other end of the room, maybe 15 meters away, and just stood there. After two or three minutes, he called out that it was even more intense there. The vibrations were going through the walls and re-entering the room, so to speak. So he was feeling the waves coming straight from the gong through the air while at the same time feeling them come from the wall, more subtely, of course, and kind of "phase shifted", swinging a little slower ... and meeting in his middle, in his bones, and muscles, organs, everywhere. We all had to try it out, of course. Was a pretty profound feeling, I must say :-)

 

A good gong is a good investment. Soon, I want to have all my gongs together in one chorus!

[Nungali]

Have you tried putting a large good quality singing bowl, with some warm water in it, on your back and getting a friend to hit it?

 

" meeting in his middle, in his bones, and muscles, organs, everywhere. "  ... the vibrations even get down inside the joint tissue, thats some 'massage' !

 

"So he was feeling the waves coming straight from the gong through the air while at the same time feeling them come from the wall, more subtely, of course, and kind of "phase shifted",

 

There was an interesting phenomena here; we have a rural property , the north is bounded by a river, further north over the river it steeply rises to a hill , a bigger series of hills and then up a steep escarpment to a plateau.

 

south of the river is our land; a river flat, then it goes up to where the community is, then up another level behind that to 'the back ridge'

 

We used to have these big festivals on the river flat, we built a sound stage down there for bands and rigged up 3 - phase power.   When one is up on top of the river flat at the first hill, where the festival entrance is, the music is being echoed off the first hill opposite the river, it sounds pretty amazing.  But if you go up the next level to the community, the sound from the first echo is heard, but part of it bounces back to the first hill on the other side and back again, so you get this weird echo effect. Go up to the next level and its trippled, go up to the high back level and there are multiple ones, the last coming off the escarpment..

 

Its pretty amazing. One night I was taking a break and up at a friends house near our back ridge. The music was amazing, cosmic, pulsating, angelic , phenomenal  ...  'Who is that performing? They sound amazing!"  we rushed down to watch and it was just some woman playing the guitar and singing reasonably good  

 

I pointed the effect out to 'India Barti'  that wanted to play his (home made)  'Bartiphone'  by remote mixing from the back ridge and  with the speakers on the festival stage  " Man!  I wanna play the feedback off the escarpment!" he told me

 

We never got to 'play the escarpment' though ;   

 

 

https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-30.4686195,152.7187381,735a,20y,81.91t/data=!3m1!1e3

Edited February 26, 2015 by Nungali

[Marblehead]

Great pictures.  Lovely area.

[soaring crane]

A friend visited me recently and recorded some gong sounds in my living room. He has decent microphones, and knows how to use them, lol. I just finished putting together a small sampler of the results, you can hear it here:

 

 

 

 

as it says in the video, you really need headphones or decent speakers to hear this. Otherwise, it'll mostly sound like the sound of silence .... Even so, this only represents about half of what really happens when the gongs are ringing, and the recording levels were extremely low to prevent clipping.

 

I played around with a video editor, to make it less boring visually...

 

edit: just noticed the clothes rack in the background of the photo. How did I not see that before??