33 Bowls – An Interview Update

Back in 2012, I interviewed the recording artist who would come to be known as 33 Bowls after his 2012 recording of the same name. He had just recorded his initial collection of 33 bowls he got from Bodhisattva in the 2009-2011 time frame, and went on to do two of the most powerful recordings of singing bowls to date with them. Now, he has consigned the last of this remarkable collection back to us to find a new home, and we’re checking in with him again.

Shakti: I remember telling you that I didn’t resonate with Breathe the way I did with 33 Bowls. When you asked me why, I confessed that I didn’t really know because I kept falling asleep a few minutes into the recording.

33: (laughs) The intention was to unwind stress. Your body reacted by going into deep relaxation, which you obviously needed.

Shakti: How did you become attracted to working with matched pairs?

33: It happened synchronistically – it was amazing to me to find bowls from different centuries that were tuned so close to each other. The unique sound of the recording is at least part from the closely matched pairs – they beat against each other like a well-tuned piano. The subtleties of the strings will weave back and forth with each other, at the same rate as relaxed breathing, a contented heart beat or an ocean wave. You do not get this effect with a single bowl.

Shakti: How did you develop that approach?

33: Familiar with healing modalities such biofeedback and, deep body work, I got the same feeling. The sounds felt similar to the feelings in those modalities, and tend to induce similar states.

Shakti: How did you update your recording technology in Breathe from 33 Bowls?

33: The microphone technique was different. I designed 33 Bowls to put the listener in the room with the singing bowls. In the sequel, Breathe, I changed the technique to envelope you, the listener in the sound of the bowls. Listen to Breathe with headphones for a particularly juicy experience.

There’s something known as “First principle”. One of the first principles I followed in 33 Bowls and Breathe was to minimize the time smear in the entire recording chain. This means reducing the unwanted effects that are common in most recording equipment, in order to maintain the integrity of the nuances and subtle textures of the sound.

Shakti:  What did you like about playing the bowls live?

33: Facilitating people becoming more chilled out and contented. I did most of these events in 2012 through 2016. Several years at the Vibration Station at the Joshua Tree Music Festival, (2014 pictured). Lightning in a Bottle, Synchronicity Symposium, Glen Muse in Ojai, the Integraton and Furst World in Joshua Tree, many private living room concerts.

Shakti: Why are you letting them go?

33: Recordings and events happen when they happen. I’ve said what I had to say. I’m moving overseas and I don’t want to put these bowls in storage. I want them to be used and enjoyed.  Ever seen a buddhist sand mandala? It symbolizes the ephemeral nature of physicality, and the eternal nature of the experience.

From 2012:

Many of our customers at Bodhisattva are destined to share their singing bowls with their communities.  But few have put more research and energy into immortalizing these vessels of peace than our customer who is simply known as 33  Bowls.  A lanky, razor sharp Californian, he amassed a world class collection of singing bowls in quarter tone tuning (close to Solfeggio) in a breathless year and a half, over the course of maybe four or five collections.  Then he recorded.  33 Bowls, in our opinion, picks up where One Hand Clapping, the first digital recording of Tibetan Bowls and nature sounds, left off.  That torch has been passed.  Thank you, 33 Bowls, for lighting up the world with it.

If anything, 33 Bowls is a confluence of ancient bronze technologies and – as of today – state of the art high resolution recording technology.  Tell us about your technical and artistic background that brought these technologies together. 

I am in awe of the masters of constructed/studio soundscape, Thomas Dolby, the late Hector Zazou, Allan Parsons of Pink Floyd, Delerium, Michael Brook, to name a few; and yet the challenge of creating, capturing, or really facilitating a natural soundscape — antique musical instruments in a live acoustic space — is/was what intrigued me.

When younger, I hung out more with nerds and musicians than with motorheads or jocks, and somehow managed to avoid serious hearing damage. Nuance and subtlety in music and sound have always been fascinating to me, and have been an attraction as to how we hear, and how to reproduce or re-create the experience in recordings.

I have both a technical and Artistic background, and firmly believe in integrating both hemispheres. I think I innately understood electronics before I could speak! For many years I was with Laserium, combining visuals of bright clear laser light with music in Planetarium domes, and facilitated thousands of mind expanding trips without partaking in any hallucinogens. Later, I was part of an analog chip design group, and left the words “Don’t Panic” from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in micron sized letters on a chip that is part of the Internet backbone.

What is ongaku?

There is a word used in audiophile circles: “ongaku” which means soul or essence of sound and music. That also describes the presence of live un-amplified music in a good acoustic space that is felt as much as it is heard. Most recordings and systems fall short, one can easily hear from the next room if it is live or reproduced, regardless of what a famous tape company claimed in ’70s and ’80s ad campaigns.

What attracted you to the bowls initially?  And what inspired you to record them?

While studying massage with the many hours of practice, I put together some remixes for massage music that were popular with fellow practitioners and recipients, but the complexity and cost of multiple copyrights prohibited general release. The call for something more fluid, natural, timeless, ethereal, and original was sparked. So, 33 Bowls started out as a couple of questions: “what if” and “wouldn’t it be nice to” in the context of Singing Bowls. It is also a story which does not have a place in the realm of strict left brained linear planning: it was a mind blowing experience of serendipity or synchronicity to piece together a set of pitch matched antique metal Singing Bowls in a relatively short period of time once the intention was set and released or let go of if I may end a sentence with a preposition. The pitch is not western A440, it turns out to be closely aligned to an older scale which is harmonically related to terrestrial and cosmic cycles, that is referred to (and unfortunately hyped) as the Solfeggio Scale, but the ratios are harmonious to western ears. It is my contention that as we, through our ancestors, have heard these sounds for centuries, and there is something innately familiar, even sacred, about the sound of antique musical instruments tuned to this scale.

What attracted you to the antique singing bowls, as opposed to Crystal bowls?

Although the more modern crystal or glass Singing Bowls can sound quite nice, particularly when accompanied by female voice, and are easier to record as they are considerably louder, the resonances are less complex. It is also arguable whether they are truly crystalline, as they are crafted as a spun amorphous slurry at high temperatures which gives them their close to perfect radial symmetry. Ironically it is the slight imperfections in metal Singing Bowls that add the complex harmonics and sub harmonic beats. Take that as a metaphor about perfect imperfection. Antique metal Singing Bowls in particular can have a rich, sonorous, smooth sound quality. But the complex harmonies and particularly sub-harmonic beats that both match and induce deep, meditative states in the brain, mind, heart, and gut are what appealed to me.

Why 33 Bowls?

I was playing live for a thanksgiving day yoga class, and the Yogi, counting the class attendees noticed there were 33 students there, and that there were 33 Singing Bowls. So the name became obvious.

Tell us about the Artwork.

The cover Artwork is from a painting in a private collection by a relatively obscure, modest, and very talented Artist. I wanted something that looked like the music of 33 Bowls feels, and this painting matched in a way that was instantly “it”. This is what the Artist had to say about the music that her painting matches: “It connects me back to something, an older language of sound that just resonates in a way that doesn’t even have words. Feels like I’m joining an ancestry, it doesn’t feel like my emotion…something that’s been dormant, becomes enlivened.” I specifically do not put my name or image on/in the album cover Artwork or liner notes, as it is about the music and not the musician, and certainly not about the musician’s ego.

The bowls are notoriously difficult to record. Tell us in general terms your approach to engineering the recordings.  Were all the bowls recorded live?

Technology: I started off with the proverbial blank sheet of paper. There is no single facet or piece of equipment in the recording chain that makes the recordings sound the way they do. There is a gestalt or synergy of everything involved. None of it is “off the shelf”; all is either modified, custom, or built from scratch. The intention was/is to capture as much of the nuance as possible early on in the signal path. Once that is lost, it is “gone forever” and no amount of studio trickery can re-constitute the aliveness of the real thing. Particular attention was/is paid to minimizing time smear in each facet or component and the implementation of that component. There are a few unavoidable background noises of a live event, but it is close to what one would hear if relaxing in a room hearing the Singing Bowls live, with full ambience and presence. It is not a studio piece by piece creation, so the continuity of the live experience is there. On a reference system, 33 Bowls is the only recording of Singing Bowls that I am aware of that has consistently fooled a variety of listeners into thinking there was a live performance of Singing Bowls in the next room. The CD and high resolution 24 bit downloads provide the highest level of fidelity, but mp3 and iTunes versions sound surprisingly good, again as the recording started out early on with full nuance and resolution.

How do the bowls affect us? How does brainwave entrainment expand our consciousness? Tell us about your work with using bowls as bio feedback instruments.

I believe there is a poignant need for awakening, coherence, articulation, integration of complexity; and hope that music such as 33 Bowls contributes to that. Although statements like that do sound rather abstract, such phenomena provide an archetypal underpinning for “concrete” embodied experiences. They are not a luxury, they are essential for not only our survival, but our “thrival” as a species on this emerald earth. I also believe it is important for us to re-discover our innate embodied, yet environmentally interconnected wisdom and how it ties in with the flow of a bigger picture; whether we call it intuition or hunches, or listening to the heart, or splenic/sacral/plexus knowing.

There is a phrase that is popular to the point of being a cliche, but does have meaning: “holding the space”. Much, maybe most music is about communicating a message of sorts, usually emotional. 33 Bowls does not do that, it holds the space to facilitate and enhance whatever is present. What it is doing is providing a coherent, yet complex natural “signal” for the ears/brain/mind to entrain to and “drop” into a more relaxed, lower stress state of being. Our ears are not passive; they are active participants in sound, interacting with the environment in a way which leads to brain/mind entrainment with what we hear, whether it is shamanic drums, Singing Bowls, cacophonic city noise, or the breath and heartbeat of someone close to us.

Here’s something to try: while listening to Singing Bowls live or via a high resolution recording, notice the embodied sensation, physically, inside your ears. It may be subtle or it may be obvious, but there will be a sensation of the area inside your ears pulsing, or moving to the sub-harmonic beats. You may even notice background sounds modulating or phasing in and out inversely. That is the mechanism of brain/mind entrainment as your ears phase lock and entrain to sounds. Once you get it, Singing Bowls and possibly other sounds may never be quite the same again.

This is likely an evolutionary throwback of our physical ancestors by which our ears have an expanded dynamic range for greater sensitivity: predator and prey developed and favored an adaptive hearing ability while listening for each other in the context of background sounds; those that were more successful passed the epigenetics to future generations.

It is possible, even probable that temple meditation in ancient times was more than enhanced by the sounds of Singing Bowls through entrainment. Once one has consciously experienced a particular state, even if induced externally, it is possible to achieve it individually sans stimulation. The practice of Mindsight and the modern field of Interpersonal Neurobiology is confirming such a hypothesis. Compassion and empathy do naturally occur with expanded external and internal focus and concurrent integration.

I have heard from numerous healing practitioners of various modalities that their clients love 33 Bowls as background music, that it enhances the healing process. I do hold a special place in my heart for those who endeavor to make the world a better place one body/psyche at a time.

Your dedication to the artisans who made the bowls I found very moving.  Do you get a sense of the bowls’ history?   Do you get a sense of timelessness?  Do you get a sense of their future? 

Very much I get the perspective of standing on the shoulders of giants, the Artisans who crafted these Singing Bowls centuries ago; their focus, intention, timeless expression of beauty and beauty in expression. Hence the dedication of gratitude to them is included in the cover Artwork. Looking to the future, unless we figure out teleromes, the collection of Singing Bowls will likely outlast me as they have with their original Artisans. One benefit of the pandora’s box of modern technology is that many more can enjoy and benefit from the sounds of Singing Bowls, particularly if they are well recorded as described above.

How many downloads of 33 Bowls have you gotten so far? What other singing bowl projects are in the works?

Actually, with “just” word of mouth and zero advertising budget, 33 Bowls has been in the Amazon New Age downloads top ten for the past year. They seem to have a mind of their own! Sequels will be released when there is genuinely something worthwhile to say. I can say that the next release will segue with the end of “morning” to make a seamless extended session of 33 Bowls. Plus, maybe, something specifically for headphones. We shall see. For announcements, check back here or visit 33bowls.com.

 

A Brief But Fantastic Buying Trip to Nepal

It had been 15 years since I’d been to Nepal. As a result our buy-out of my former partner, our supply chain had broken down on so many fronts: malas, tingshaw, Ghanta & Dorje, gongs: we had run out of most of these items in the past year. And although I managed to find antique bowls, it always meant pulling a numerous reproductions into the net as well.  So our supply chain had to be repaired. It was ambitious to the point of crazy, really.  How was I to pack a three-week buying trip to Nepal into just nine days? That, in a country itself still in repair after the horrific earthquakes of April and May of this year. Still, nine days, plus the onerous travel time on either end, was all I could be away.  So it had to work.

But as it turned out, the upheaval from the earthquakes was only the beginning.  After a decade or longer of political infighting, On September 20th, Nepal formally adopted a constitution; its first, following a civil war that killed 13,000 people and ending 239 years of monarch rule. But it was not to be a unifying event that we had hoped. The Madhesi people of the southern plains, on Nepal’s border with India, complained of becoming “second class citizens”, and protested that the constitution diluted their vote. Almost everyone I talked to had a different understanding of the Madhesi situation, but protests became violent almost immediately gave rise to paralyzing strikes and 40 deaths. Violence broke out in Western Nepal, also for the charge of under-representation. The constitution created a second class citizenship level for children born of Nepalese mothers and foreign fathers.  Some called the constitution a “conservative backlash”.

Vehicles queue for petrol as the nation undergoes oil and fuel crisis in Bhadrakali, Kathmandu on Wednesday. Photo:Skanda Gautam

Then India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modri, spoke out against it, which created an uproar in Nepal and the great fuel crisis began. India, surrounding Nepal on three borders, closed their borders, and as Nepal was reliant for fuel from India, cars had no petrol; restaurants lacked cooking oil. The Nepali government rationed petrol to keep government and tourism vehicles running, but petrol sales to private vehicles slowed to a trickle. This created long lines of vehicles parked in the roads extending for blocks, some waiting for gas for two days. A competitor called me and asked it I was going to cancel my ticket.  “Jimmy Carter canceled,” he said.  “I’m not Jimmy Carter,” I observed.  I had to go. Canceling my ticket wasn’t an option, so off I went on my first buying trip to Nepal in 15 years in the middle of an unprecedented fuel crisis.

But the Nepalese are an endlessly resourceful people. As there were no taxis, I hired a driver to get around who procured

gas from the black market. So much had changed in Kathmandu. The air was clogged with pollution.  Where once platoons of bicycles were the Nepali middle class mode of transport, now armies of motorbikes choked the streets; entire families often sandwiched together on them. Nearly everyone wore masks, respiratory illness was rampant. In addition to the gas shortage, restaurants taped limited selections to their menus due to lack of cooking oil. Getting milk was a problem, so I never knew if Chai would be served. So this was not the Nepal I remembered.

In Thamel, the tourist section of Kathmandu, my perch at the Kathmandu Guest House was an oasis. The first hotel in Thamel, it had a huge, manicured garden trimmed with pots of bright marigolds and dotted with garlanded statues of the Buddha. My nine day visit coincided with Navarati;  (meaning nine nights) a holiday commemorating the triumph of the Goddess Durga over the evil demon Mahishasura.  The Autumnal Navaratri precedes Nepal’s biggest festival, Deshain (meaning 10th day), when the country sacrificed goats and went back to the villages to celebrate the festival with their families. My goal was to be out of the country before the bloodletting began. I booked full days with my singing bowl suppliers, while trying to carve out time to locate the vendors of incense and mala beads, and to hopefully connect with Seejan’s family, as well as do a little pilgrimage to Pashupatinath.

As I’d heard from my suppliers many of the small Tibetan dealers where we used to buy the findings for our malas were breaking early for the holidays due to the gas shortage.  So on the day after I arrived, I set off with a Nepali friend to go to Boudhanath Stupa to try to find a Mala supplier I had not seen in 15 years. The Stoupa had suffered damage on its dome, and I was crestfallen to see the dome completely barren – its brick steeple and been removed, and the aerial array of prayer flags missing from the empty sky above.

Tibetan Mala #0001

The smooth, polished Bodhi seed malas we got from dealers 15 years ago were abundant – we used to sell them wholesale. Now shops and alleyways were overstuffed with garlands of malas with huge, course Bodhi seeds, and there was no evidence anywhere of our old quality.  We spent the afternoon flitting from shop to shop with samples, until, until we found one shop with one, lone mala of the smallest, smoothest Bodhi seeds I had seen in years. The young man behind the counter wanted a ransom for it, and it took us a little while to put it together, but he was in fact the son of our former supplier – in a new location. Once we were reacquainted, he combed his displays and pulled out some beads of our old quality – the last in stock he had.

Fifteen years ago, we had to go through rooms of antique bowls to find the good ones.  Now, I had to go through a warehouse of singing bowl reproductions – tens of thousands of them – just to find the real antiques, good or bad.  All of our suppliers had tons of this material – all of which, they insisted was “old”. Some of it was, but the great majority of it was new.  It was remarkable how beautifully crafted so much of it was.  Still, one supplier had been holding rare material for me for some months’ time.  When I got into the room with the material, a reverential feeling came over me.  I had never seen so much rare material in one place. My only limitations were time and budget, although I pushed the envelope on both. Then, The next push was to get it out before the city shut down.  I had so much competent help from my supplier’s workers!  I kept them working late until the Nepali equivalent of Christmas Eve.

On my one morning off, I paid a visit to Seejan in his village to see his Mother-in-law’s house and to meet his family.  Although his wife was doing Puja at their temple for Navaratri, I was able to connect with his daughter Ritisha, (9), and his son Yunish (6), and bring his mother-in-law a coconut from Pashupatinath. The countryside was rebuilding, but Seejan’s mother-in-law’s house was cobbled together by stacked bricks on a dirt floor.  They are still trying to amass enough funds to rebuild.  To rebuild a home in Nepal takes $3,000 – $5,000; they still have $2,500 to raise.  If you would like to help Seejan and his family rebuild, please donate to nagashakti@gmail.com and write “Seejan” in your notes.

Seejan’s mother-in-law’s house, in her family for generations, has been cobbled together with bricks and no mortar. She earns 450 Rupees a week as a field worker, the equivalent of $4.50.

Seejan’s Mother-in-law’s house, side view

Tibetan Anthem; Tibetan Bowls

Recently, while reading about the immolations that have been spreading through Tibet, I came across a video on YouTube of the Tibetan National Anthem.  Even though I have been in the Dharma community since coming to Southern California in 1994, I had never knowingly heard it played or sung.  Of all of the Sutras I have heard and all of the Tibetan gatherings I have attended, no one had ever identified any piece of music as the anthem of Tibet.  I didn’t know they had one.  So when I found it on YouTube,  I was surprised;  when I heard it, I was captivated.

Known as Gyallu, the lyrics are based on the teachings of the Buddha.  They are attributed to Trijang Rinpoche, who was a spiritual guide to the 14th Dalai Lama for some 40 years.  Apparently, the lyrics were set to an ancient piece of sacred music; I would love to know the Sutra it comes from. The melody was sinuous and elevating, and seemed to exude hope.  It had a hook in it, too.  The first version I ran across was Camerata of St. John’s version, a brilliant performance with a soulful lead cello accompanied by intervals of violent string arrangements.  It  sounded like it was in the key of F#.  I listened to it over and over.

For the past few years at Bodhisattva, it has been my pleasure to play Christmas carols on a set of Tibetan singing bowls and shoot a little video of it.  So every year as the Christmas season approaches, I start mulling which Christmas carol I’d like to play.  But by now it was late November, and Gyallu was staying with me. I was headed to The Rubin Museum in New York for their Serai event right after Thanksgiving.  The more I thought about it, visualizing myself spending a week there, cocooned in its spiraling galleries of Himalayan Sacred Art, the less likely I was going to feel like playing “I heard the Bells on Christmas Day” on Tibetan bowls.  As the immolations quickened, it seemed all the more important that this hymn should be heard.

So, Gyallu it was.  The only trouble was going to be learning the melody in less than 7 days time, while flying to New York, setting up a booth at The Rubin Museum of Art, doing a five-day trunk show and giving some singing bowl workshops.  I realized that as haunting as Gyallu was in the key Camerata had played it in, it was too hard a key for me.  To begin with,  I’m not at all gifted with the kind of ear where I can hear something once or twice and pick up on it.  Learning Christmas carols on the bowls is easy:  I’ve heard those melodies since I was in the womb.  Although this melody had very simple scales in it, it seemed labyrinthian to me.

We know that music is a mnemonic device. What I didn’t realize is how handy it is to have words to find our way around a piece of music.  There wasn’t time to learn both.  Finally, I found the music in a G major key which simplified learning the tune.  I hadn’t had the occasion to read music since I was around 14, and this music was charted by a Westerner.  Although I heard wide variations in the recordings by Tibetan artists, I used it as a guide.  It goes something like this:

The short time frame meant that would mean I had to practice it at night.  As  I had to commute out to my friend’s house in Staten Island every evening, that meant lugging about 15 pounds of bronze bowls on the subway and the ferry each night.  Which I did, plugging into a Tibetan version on YouTube while steaming past the Statue of Liberty.  It was an emotional juxtaposition for me, these nightly sightings of our national symbol of freedom, listening to this song of spiritual liberation sung by a people who are not free to sing it in their own homeland.  I contemplated our own violent path to independence, and wondered what path Tibet can take to spiritual and cultural  freedom.  It seems that the quest for Tibetan autonomy is perennially pushed off the front page, with no artillery or rockets to attract headlines.  It is a quiet struggle, where monks as well as laypeople feel the imperative to be free is more important than life itself.  I stared at Lady Liberty’s face.  She is steadfast, resolute, fearless.  She inspired me to never give up hope for Tibet.

Halfway through the Serai trunk show, I approached Dawn Eshelman, programming manager at The Rubin, and asked if it would be possible to shoot our video at  The Rubin.  Graciously, she and the Rubin management allowed us to use the theater Sunday, at the end of the workshop.  Theo Dorian, a friend from numerous film classes in our college days, generously gave us his time to shoot.  Susan Lamoureaux supported us with access to lighting and the Rubin’s remarkable sound system, and let us keep shooting til the Museum’s doors were closed.  Prisanee Suwanwatana, manager of the Rubin Shop, very kindly made sure our booth was covered, and  stayed late that night so we could pack up our bowls and our gear.  The staff at the Rubin were so amazingly supportive.  My thanks to Tashi Choedron, the beautiful Tibetan museum tour guide, for her encouragement.

Although The Dalai Lama himself makes no call for Tibet’s independence from China in any way, he tireless asks of us to support Tibetans in their quest to win the basic human right to practice their religion in peace and to preserve their culture for future generations.  If you would like learn more about what you can do to help, please visit International Campaign for Tibet.

Om Mani Padme Hum.

The Bodhisattva Recording Project

Bodhisattva Recording Project

Part of Bodhisattva’s mission is to archive the sound files of the thousands of antique singing bowls that have passed through our business in the past 16 years.

One of the ways we seek to preserve this legacy is to develop and maintain strict standards on the quality of the recordings we produce, recording both the struck and rim tones of each singing bowl and Master Healing Set that we sell on our site.  In our Large Singing Bowl Galleries, we also record the fundamental (deeper) tones as well. These recordings have improved as technology and bandwidth have evolved, but improvement is a never ending quest.  We try to give our customers the most faithful experience of the bowls possible.  Our recording artist Son Vo (pictured left) has a wonderful hand on the bowls and scrubs the recordings clean of rim noise,  sirens, aircraft, traffic, dogs, crows, and other sounds of West Los Angeles daily life.

But the real impetus for this project is more personal – a desire for the bowls to be heard as broadly as possible, and for their sound to endure beyond their lifetimes.  So we’re creating an archive of this treasure trove of sound files, which will require a great deal of time to organize (we’re always looking for intern help with this project!).   I’m driven by the awareness of how relatively rare it is that this cross current of antique singing bowls should all flow through this time and place; and a sense of responsibility to document them all.  Especially the sets, as to our knowledge, there have never been recordings of singing bowl sets before.   And as we craft these handmade, very individual pieces together to form intervals and scales, I’m struck with the reality that these sets will not stay together forever.  So we seek to preserve the relationships of these bowls.  And the basic fabric of our recording will be woven with these sounds.

The Bodhisattva recording will also feature live sessions as well.  For the past two years, Son and I have been recording sessions with the bowls in the studios of Lotus Post, in Santa Monica, California. We did our first session with the inspiration to interweave one of our best diatonic sets together with one of our best pentatonic sets, utilizing not just striking tones, but all of the fundamental and rim tones as well.  Lotus Post’s founder, Michael Perricone, a bowl master himself, has been a driving force in helping us with the project as producer, engineer and at the onset of the project, a co-musician as well.

In our last antique collection, we received a flurry of concert-pitch Highwalls, four tuned to concert pitch on the fundamentals (C, A & two matching Fs) and two tuned concert pitch on the rims (E & G).  It was an anomaly that so many Highwalls tuned to whole tones should all come together in the same collection.  I have only completed one antique Highwall set and it took about four or five years to complete.  That set was matched on the rims, from a fifth octave C to a B (featured in our Crown Chakra Meditation video).  However, we had no recording of anything with whole tones mixed between the rims and fundamentals. So, on a beautiful, late summer evening, we took the bowls to Lotus Post to capture their resonance together, before they parted ways forever.

Shakti recording at Lotus Post, Santa Monica, CA

What I loved about this collection is that they all had something to say to each other, and I felt as though I was sitting in on a conversation conducted in a universal tongue.  Despite their varying densities, their timbres were well matched and I loved the interplay of the whole tones referencing each other across the octaves, with their flatted fifth harmonies dancing in between.   I felt so blessed to have been in the room when they all came together.

 Son and I have a rough layout of the sequencing,  but our “day jobs” come first!  So the project is slowly getting  done as soon as the flow of work allows.  Please stay tuned!

1,000 Years of Tibetan Bowls – the Longplayer Project

Initiated in 1999 by Jem Finer, this project is a composition of Tibetan singing bowls designed to play until 2999.  Click on the link below to listen.

Longplayer’s first live performance, The Roundhouse, 2009. [Atherton-Chiellino] [ENLARGE]

What is Longplayer?

Longplayer is a one thousand year long musical composition. It began playing at midnight on the 31st of December 1999, and will continue to play without repetition until the last moment of 2999, at which point it will complete its cycle and begin again. Conceived and composed by Jem Finer, it was originally produced as an Artangel commission, and is now in the care of the Longplayer Trust.

Longplayer can be heard in the lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London, where it has been playing since it began. It can also be heard at several other listening posts around the world, and globally via a live stream on the Internet.  Longplayer started playing at three separate listening posts in London and Sydney at 00:00 hours (IDLE) on the 1st of January 2000 (i.e. midnight on the International Date Line – midday on the 31st of December 1999 in London).

Longplayer is composed for singing bowls – an ancient type of standing bell – which can be played by both humans and machines, and whose resonances can be very accurately reproduced in recorded form. It is designed to be adaptable to unforeseeable changes in its technological and social environments, and to endure in the long-term as a self-sustaining institution.

The listening post at the Lighthouse, Trinity Buoy Wharf, 2000. [Steve Pyke]

The Long Term

Longplayer grew out of a conceptual concern with problems of representing and understanding the fluidity and expansiveness of time. While it found form as a musical composition, it can also be understood as a living, 1000-year-long process – an artificial life form programmed to seek its own survival strategies. More than a piece of music, Longplayer is a social organism, depending on people – and the communication between people – for its continuation, and existing as a community of listeners across centuries.

An important stage in the development of the project was the establishment of the Longplayer Trust, a lineage of present and future custodians invested with the responsibility to research and implement strategies for Longplayer’s survival, to ask questions as to how it might keep playing, and to seek solutions for an unknown future.

Composition in Time

Longplayer is composed in such a way that the character of its music changes from day to day and – though it is beyond the reach of any one person’s experience – from century to century. It works in a way somewhat akin to a system of planets, which are aligned only once every thousand years, and whose orbits meanwhile move in and out of phase with each other in constantly shifting configurations. In a similar way, Longplayer is predetermined from beginning to end – its movements are calculable, but are occurring on a scale so vast as to be all but unknowable.

Longplayer’s composition uses a minimum amount of information and material to create the maximum amount of variety, in terms of both sound and form. While it is a system-based composition, it is made out of very expansive and resonant musical material, which in itself is not ‘systematic’ sounding. This material (the ‘source music’) is played on Tibetan singing bowls, which possess a simple but harmonically rich sound, and a quality which is at once both physical and ethereal. A simple form of synthesis arises from the interactions of these instruments’ waveforms, with the consequence that while Longplayer’s score is deterministic, its music at any given time is unpredictable.

Technology

At present, Longplayer is being performed mostly by computers. However, it was created with a full awareness of the inevitable obsolescence of this technology, and is not in itself bound to the computer or any other technological form.

Although the computer is a cheap and accurate device on which Longplayer can play, it is important – in order to legislate for its survival – that a medium outside the digital realm be found. To this end, one objective from the earliest stages of its development has been to research alternative methods of performance, including mechanical, non-electrical and human-operated versions.

Among these is a graphical score for six players and 234 singing bowls. The first performance based on this score took place over 1,000 minutes on 12 – 13 September, 2009, at the Roundhouse, London. Longplayer Live is performed on a vast, specially-constructed instrument by an orchestra of players working in shifts. A series of further performances are in planning for various venues around the world – see the Live page for more information.

The first Longplayer leaflet, 1999. [Artangel]

Who Created Longplayer?

Longplayer was developed and composed by Jem Finer between October 1995 and December 1999, with the support and collaboration of Artangel. It was managed by Candida Blaker, with a think tank comprising artist Brian Eno, British Council Director of Music John Keiffer, landscape architect Georgina Livingston, Artangel co-director Michael Morris, digital sound artist Joel Ryan, architect and writer Paul Shepheard and writer and composer David Toop. A full account of Longplayer’s development can be found in the 2003 book Longplayer, published by Artangel, London.

Jem Finer is a UK-based artist, musician and composer. Since studying computer science in the 1970s, he has worked in a variety of fields, including photography, film, music and installation. Longplayer represents a convergence of many of his concerns, particularly those relating to systems, long-durational processes and extremes of scale in both time and space. Among his other works is Score For a Hole In the Ground (2005), a permanent musical installation in a forest in Kent. Self-sustaining and relying only on gravity and the elements to be audible, the project continues Finer’s interest in long-term sustainability and the reconfiguring of older technologies.

Based in London and working both in the UK and internationally, Artangel has been commissioning and producing ambitious projects by contemporary artists for the last two decades. Often surprising in both conception and scale, each project begins with an invitation to an artist to develop a new work, inspired and given shape by a particular place. Artangel works closely with the artist to realise the full potential of the work in whatever form, medium and context seems best. Since the early 1990s, Artangel has produced over fifty major new commissions including Rachel Whiteread’s House (1992), Michael Landy’s Breakdown (2001), Francis Alys’ Seven Walks (2005) and Heiner Goebbel’s Stifters Dinge (2008). Artangel is supported by the Arts Council of England and The Company of Angels. Visit www.artangel.org.uk for more information.

Proposed mechanical version, 2002. [Atelier One] [ENLARGE]

All content © 2012 The Longplayer Trust. Contact: info@longplayer.org . Designed and built by Moneymouth.

An Experience Shared: William Ward talks about Healing with Tibetan Singing Bowls

William at Down 2 Earth April 2012

William Ward, a former New Yorker who resides now in Pensacola, FL was a Chef for 13 years.  To relieve his job related stress, he discovered meditation.  He now has a full time sound healing practice and has been a Bodhisattva customer since 2009.  William will be playing his collection of Bodhisattva singing bowls on the program shifthappensradio.com on 6/21/12.  We are in the process of building William a two-octave Master Healing set.

 

How did you get involved with bowls?

 That’s one of the most important questions.  It started with a meditation.  In a meditation, there was a sound that I can’t even begin to describe with words – it brought a knowing of an unconditional love that was there – just the deepest experience of peace I’d ever had.  What it taught me was that God was real within us, which was what I was looking for and was the reason I was meditating.  A few months later, I walked into a conscious living store, heard a CD playing and heard the bowls.  Tears of remembrance of the sound I experienced flooded me, and I knew I had to look into it.  And that’s how it all started.

You started with Crystal bowls? 

 The Crystal bowls and Tibetan bowls came at the same time.

What were you looking for?

 I was looking for what I had experienced in that sound and I wasn’t finding it everywhere.  That’s why I stuck with you guys. I’ve done a lot of research and looked around and you guys connected very well with everything I was looking for.

Did you study with any one?

I read some books, Mitchell Gaynor, “The Healing Power of Sound”, and Jonathan Goldman “Healing Sounds”.  They were both very helpful, as they expressed my experience in ways I couldn’t yet grasp with my own words. Reading up on it helped me to find my own words, for which I am eternally grateful.

So you never studied with anybody, but you read the books and got started from there?

 Yes.  It was more an intuition that just brought everything together – the more I worked with them and shared them, the more intuition expanded from the experience.  The experience was the knowing. I just followed that.

Please talk to me about how you integrate the Crystal and the Tibetan Bowls.  Usually people resonate with one or the other.

 What I was looking for was to recreate that sound in the experience I had – it is my wish for everyone to experience that for themselves. I found that to re-create that sound, I had to use more bowls, I had to fill in certain spaces.  And it opened my eyes to see how chords were playing while I was filling in the spaces, and it expanded from there.  I loved the harmonies and the timbres and the higher frequencies when I brought in the Tibetans.

Tell me how you work with the Chakras.

 I was very skeptical about the Chakras and didn’t understand them in the beginning. So I really put some time into understanding them for myself.  It’s psychosomatic, because our Chakras lie along our Central Nervous System.  I realized what effects our nervous system the most is our thoughts about reality. Who I think I am affects every way in which I will express myself.

We’re all spirit having a human experience; however, if I’m too connected to the human experience it limits that awareness.  Where our blocks happen is when we forget this reality.  Reality is itself the seen and the unseen working hand in hand.  I started seeing everything as vibration – whether you can see it or not, it is in vibrating form like an orchestra playing its song.  So when I say reality, everything in existence has its song that it’s singing, each component or instrument is vital for the whole composition.  And we as humans have that awareness of observation. So where and who we think we are, we are.  But we don’t have to stay there.  And that’s the correlation I was making with the Chakras being psychosomatic – reality is limitless, it always has been.

Usually when we hear the word psychosomatic, it refers to someone manifesting a physical condition simply by believing they have it.  Is that what you mean be psychosomatic?

Not manifesting, but knowing it to be true. For example, our Root Chakra is connected with physicality. And we can stop there, which most of us do, or we can look to see energetic origins of physicality, which would raise our awareness of that Chakra more.

How did you choose working with the diatonic scale system as the basis of the Chakras as opposed to any other system?

 I never put any thought to it, I just went where I was guided, which isn’t as simple as it sounds.  I just went with my intuition.  But I do love to learn how other people use their styles and techniques.

When you do your sessions, you just put the Tibetans on the body?

Almost always. Sometimes I’ll also place the crystal bowls on the body.

How do you decide that?

Each session is different.  There’s a knowing in the moment.  What I love about the bowls is that it’s not imparting a verbal knowledge to them, it’s sharing the experience with them, which is priceless.

Why do you do what you do?

 It was important for me when I experienced that peace within, that became my new passion.  And I know that when everyone can find that place that is within them, we will all know, so naturally, how we can move forward together, in a sustainable way for the environment, our children and their children.

Tell me about the show you’re doing.

 El – the host of Shift Happens radio – called me and said  that she’d heard from quite a few people about me, and she wanted me to come on for a two hour segment.  It will be airing 10 PM EST 6/21 and will be available on podcast afterward.  www.shifthappensradio.com.

Tell me about the collection from BTC you will be using tomorrow.

I’ll definitely be using my C# Highwall and the Pentatonic set, and then I’ll use Pentatonic cup set if I have the spacing.  I have one E that was gifted to me that’s a 10 or a 12”, so I don’t know if I’ll have the space for it or not.  For the crystal bowls, I have an Alchemy set.

So you will be giving us that experience tomorrow.  We’re really looking forward to hearing it!

Sound Healing with Singing Bowls and Voice – an Interview with Marie Bergman

Marie Bergman, a musician and singer from Stockholm, Sweden, visited Bodhisattva on a quest to find a bowl.  With great ease, she selected a 10 7/8″ with a slightly sharp G fundamental on the second octave – a perfect choice for a singer.  As she bonded with her bowl, she began to sing – almost as if her process of getting to know the bowl was to sing with it.  Ever ready with my trusty iphone, I captured the moment in video.  Marie was also kind enough to give her an interview and talk about her work:

Can you tell us about your background in music?

I am a professional musician and singer/songwriter for some thirty years.  I have made twenty recordings with my own compositions and three CDs with jazz music.  I have been touring in Scandinavia for many years and  have also represented Sweden in a European Song contest three times.  My voice has a pretty wide range and I have always all the time been searching for more ways of expressing myself through the wonders of the voice.  I find the voice has endless possibilities!

Your singing felt like a lullaby to me.  Were you at all influenced by the folk music of Sweden?

Well, folk music is running in my blood but it is not the core of my expression.  When I sing with the bowls it often shines through like an archetypal depth of the voice.  But my toning comes out differently each time.

How did you come to explore harmonics?

In the mid-80’s I had a lot of problems with my voice.  I was performing rock n roll and raw soul, and I was hard on the voice.  I was also in pain from too much tension.  This all together created a (very much needed…) breakdown.  I silenced myself for a long time and when I returned to the sound again, I learned to sing and express myself differently.  I  also during this time experienced the healing power of the voice and learned to breathe much deeper.   I started to meditate and take care of myself.  I became fascinated of the voice´s capability to adjust and how it helped me mature my singing and through this I started to experience toning as a training method.  It became my freedom.  And that helped me keep the singing voice even more fresh and vital.  I discovered there was a lot of power and life force in the harmonics.  I started to listen to them very carefully.

How do you use harmonics in your music?

I differ my singing voice from the toning voice.  My singing voice is a storyteller, where the words are important but also the sounds of the words.  Songs are form. Harmonics makes my singing voice more clear and lifts the flow, making the singing physical and powerful without pressure.  When I tone, I stay more purposely with the harmonics, letting them vibrate and resonate in their own frequency and time.  Together with the bowls, the expression gets strong and spiritual.  I use the mouth and the body resonators differently when I tone.  I become like a wind instrument.

What attracted you to singing bowls?

The beautiful archetypal sound, the physical resonance, the timeless vibration, the beauty and the wisdom!

How do you use their vibration in sound healing?

I work with voice and Ssinging bowls in different settings.  Sometimes more performance-like when the purpose is to gather people.  When I do sound healing on the bodymind, I direct the sounds from the bowl and my voice to the body (my own or another’s) with a special intention.  I also put the different bowls on different parts of the body of a client when I do ”singing bowl-massage”.  I am trained in sound healing as well as in the ”Peter Hess method” of singing bowl-massage. I often combine sound healing and singing bowl-massage and train others as well.  Peter Hess singing bowl-massage is a wonderful, deep relaxation method for regaining spiritual and physical health, to refresh and vitalize your cells as well as your muscles, tissues and organs.  In the massage, I place different sizes of  bowls on different specific parts of the body.  I strike them gently and let the beautiful matching frequencies of the bowls do their magic wave work with elegance and grace.

Tell us of how you are using the bowls in your community.

My own voice school BERGMAN VOICE and the use of singing bowls has developed as an extension from my singing seminars and teaching at the Music Conservatories in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.  I run seminars in toning and voice workshops all year round.  I offer singing bowl-massage.  Sometimes I perform with the bowls and let them illustrate a poem or resonate beautifully and sensually with a song.  I always have them with me even when I give singer/songwriter performances solo or with the band.  I use them in the concerts in at least one or two songs.

Come Together Ceremony, Katarina Church

I use the bowls when I do my gatherings in one of the biggest churches in Stockholm, the Katarina church.  I call it ”Come Together-Ceremonies”.  Everyone is welcome.  I always open this ceremony with the singing bowl and my voice, an improvisation where the resonance is flying freely under the heights in the cathedral.  It always gives me and everybody goose bumps.  Then I teach the audience how to tone and they gather in a circle with their voices and I also let them walk around in the church, singing freely.  They are happy!  It’s very beautiful.  See the You Tube link.

How did you discover the language?

I was training a lot with the voice, also did a quite heavy sound therapy and sound healing to clean blockages and resistances in the beginning to allow myself to get out of the box.  When I started to play the bowls it kind of powered up the voice by itself.  I guess the voice was very happy about the good vibrations!  I learned to keep out of pressure as much as possible and another language was discovered and created.

Do you find yourself at home in a certain key?

I try to widen the voice range as much as possible. I find that all the frequencies has its own fascination.  I also find that harmonics has helped my voice to expand and move freely among the different keys as much as possible. Voice is the mirror of the life force!

Do you believe specific notes are associated with the Chakras?

Yes. But I found they differ a bit from person to person. But of course they range from low to higher and the other way around.

How can one purchase your recordings?

Spotify on my name: Marie Bergman.  But I haven’t yet recorded my toning with the singing bowls.  Maybe sooner than later hopefully…

We hope sooner, Marie!

How to Hand Wah-Wah Your Singing Bowl

If you lived through the 60’s, the term “Wah-Wah” conjures memories of Jimi Hendrix’s Voodoo Child, or the theme from the 70’s movie Shaft, but probably not an image of a Tibetan Singing Bowl.  While all singing bowls naturally produce oscillating frequencies, the Hand Wah-Wah is added oscillation capability in certain, specially constructed singing bowls which can be manipulated to modulate its sound waves by gently squeezing the base of the bowl with the holding hand.

The first bowl that actually “spoke” to me – that clearly communicated (as if it were speaking English) that it was my bowl – was a Hand Wah-Wah bowl.  It was awkward.  Our bed & breakfast suite was open for a trunk show in Sedona, Arizona, and a couple of ladies were hovering over a kitchen table crammed with bowls.  I struck one bowl randomly (ha!) out of the crowd, and immediately heard the “bend” in the struck tone.  I’d never heard anything like that and I wanted to hear more!  But I didn’t want to draw my customer’s attention to it, cause I was afraid they’d notice how cool it was.  So I waited til they picked up another bowl and when they were completely focused on it, I snatched my bowl and stowed it under the table!  It was love at first sound:  that bowl sat by my altar for the next 11 years.  I spent hours losing myself in its kaleidoscopic harmonies.

How is the Hand Wah-Wah different from the other modulations that singing bowls make?  When heard binaurally, singing bowls naturally produce beat frequencies that sound like an oscillation of the bowls’ harmonics.  All singing bowls produce these beats: they are the bowl’s pulse which kinetically entrains our brainwaves and calm the mind for meditation.  They’ve worked this way for thousands of years. Often, two separate pulses can be perceived: usually a slower pulse in the fundamental tone and a faster one in the female overtone.  But this is not the “wah-wah” effect; these oscillations are  just “standard equipment” in a singing bowl.

Hand Wah-Wah bowls are different.  In 16 years I’ve been working with singing bowls, I honestly have no idea what is different about their physical structure that enables us to produce these modulations.  I’ve studied the bases of these bowls.  They are both thick and thin; their bases are rounded as well as flat; I have found no physical common denominator between them.  All I know is that Hand Wah-Wah bowls are rare; usually only a handful of bowls in any collection will have that capability. They look like ordinary, Thadobati style, antique singing bowls.

So to get the effect, you first need to know your bowl has a Hand Wah-Wah capability.  We will usually notate this capability in our description of our singing bowls; they turn up most often on the Medium bowl section in our Singing Bowl Galleries.  Wherever you find it, once you know you have one, here’s how you get the technique:

1)  Start by looking at the position of the bowl on your holding hand.  It should be positioned so that just your fingertips are slightly extended beyond the base of the bowl.  In most instances, you want to avoid wrapping your fingertips around the curve in the bowl’s base, as that can dampen a bowl’s sound.  However, with this technique, slightly wrapping your fingertips around the bowl’s base can sometimes enhance the Wah-Wah effect.

2) Strike your bowl with the covered end of your mallet.  Whether it’s covered with leather or wool doesn’t really doesn’t matter, but bear in mind that the suede mallet will emphasize the mid and female overtones in a bowl, and those are the tones that lend themselves  to the Hand Wah-wah effect the best.

3) Once struck, very gently squeeze the base of the bowl with your holding hand.  It’s important to note that you are contracting your hand with every squeeze and as you do, a space opens up between your hand and the base of the bowl.  This is where the sound is being modulated.  On some bowls, the hand wah-wah is positional:  they will have a “sweet spot” where it jumps out at you.  So if you don’t find the wah-wah at first, rotate the bowl around until you find it.  Another technique that works is to rock the bowl from your fingertips to the heel of your hand.

You can also see videos on You Tube of people making a “wah-wah” sound by modulating the bowl’s sound waves with the aperture of their mouths.  Except for certain really dense and thick singing bowls, almost any singing bowl will respond to this technique.  Strike your bowl and place your mouth about an inch away from the upper wall near the rim.  Then, purse your lips in a fish-like motion. You don’t have to vocalize at all, just play with shaping the sound waves in your mouth by the dilating aperture of your lips.  This too is positional:  if you don’t hear anything at  first, rotate the bowl around until you find its “sweet spot”.   The richer the harmonics of the bowl, the more bend you can get out of the wah-wah.  The larger and more sloped the bowl’s wall,  the tones there you can isolate and bend.  What’s great is to actually “taste” the tingly sensation of the sound waves in your mouth – delicious!

To see a quick video demo on both techniques, please check the video page on our Website.  Have fun!

Notes from the Rubin Museum

Ngor Abbot Sanggye Senge (detail); Tibet; 17th century; Pigments on cloth; Rubin Museum of Art

Whenever I’m in New York City, I make a pilgrimage to the Rubin Museum.  Housed in the old Barney’s Building on Sixth Avenue and 17th Street, I love to sit in its Cafe, eat vegetarian MoMo’s and think to myself “this used to be the hosiery department.  This is where I used to buy my hose.”

More hours still, I’ve spent wandering its Galleries, gazing at the Bodhisattvas, permeating myself with their teachings.  In one trip a few years ago, I was going through the Rubin’s Online Resources gallery and was so moved by a passage I found, I scribbled it down with the paper and pencils they had for put out for children’s art projects.  I came across it last night, and thought I’d share it with you:

In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.

Buddhists believe that clinging to a sense of self is the fundamental cause of suffering.  The antidote to that suffering is compassion for others.  Compassion in action is having the desire to relieve them of suffering.

Impermanence is commonly associated with the negative, or death, the end of a lucky streak, or the termination of a relationship.  But this is a limited view that does not account for the necessity of impermanence and the positive beginnings that arise from endings.  Impermanence can be good news. The end of infancy is childhood, the end of war is peace, the end of loneliness is companionship.  Without the end of day we would have no sunset, no moon, no stars.

Thich Nhat Hanh playing a Japanese rin gong

As Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh has reminded us, impermanence is “an instrument to help us penetrate deeply into reality and obtain liberating insight.  With impermanence, every door is open for change.”  When we can let go and embrace the unknown, fear subsides.

Again, it is Thich Nhat Hanh who has said it best: “It is possible to find ease and grace in the world of change; it is possible to trust the mind of non-clinging and so find our liberation within the world of impermanence.”  As we see impermanence clearly, we see that there is nothing real that we can actually cling to.

Heart Chakra Healing Meditation

Heart Chakra Healing Meditation with Singing Bowl

A happy Valentines Day may not be about receiving flowers or Valentines messages, a romantic evening on the town, or even having a date! It’s so easy to be distracted into quantifying the measure of love in our lives to be the love we receive, instead of the love we give! This Valentine’s Day, as we’re inundated with revenue generating messages, we can instead focus on a healing meditation for the Heart Chakra.

Although the world’s major sound healing systems perceive the Heart Chakra frequency variably to be either a fourth octave F or D, any beautifully tuned singing bowl can be used for this meditation. Sitting comfortably with your back straight and shoulders even and relaxed, softly strike the singing bowl with the padded end of your mallet. Taking generous, but natural breaths into the solar plexus, tune into the bowls’ frequencies. Try to lengthen them to the count of 8 on the inhale, and a count of 8 on the exhale. On the in-breath, visualize the sound waves entering your heart through your chest. Let the vibrations expand the area around your heart, creating a space of light. Visualize your exhale washing back out of your chest, releasing any emotional contractions around the heart which can create energy blocks. These can feel like tightness, pain, or fear: give them to the bowl. Strike again, and repeat. Images and thought forms attached to these emotions may come up. Be aware that they are only products of the mind, and gently release them through the out breath.

Now begin to rim your singing bowl, breathing in the female overtone through the chest and directing your breath up the Shuchumna Nadi, straight up the spine and out the Crown Chakra at the very top of the head. Now visualize your heart’s energy in the form of love infused into your breath, and direct it up the spine and out the Crown Chakra. As you exhale, you can visualize God; your loved ones; all sentient beings; the planet and its life forms; perhaps yourself: all bathed in your love. As you lift your mallet off the bowl and listen to the sustain fade into the air, enjoy the vibration of silence that remains. Observe the space you have created around your heart; it should feel lighter, and your whole body should feel energized. Your Heart Chakra should feel open and clear, a perfect conduit for love to flow.

Like any meditation practice, Chakra healing takes time and perseverance. Enjoy the journey!