Learn how to improve the way you play your crystal singing bowl.
First we will explore different mallets, and then different techniques to help you become confident in your playing skills while creating soothing sounds.
- When you start to play, remember, you do not need to tap your bowl first. Tap because you want that sound, not because you think you need to activate it.
- When I begin to play my bowl, I like to use a little extra pressure while quickly moving the wand around the rim.Once the bowl begins to sing, I back off, with less pressure and slower movements so that my bowl sings quietly. If I don't ease off on the pressure and speed, my bowl will become very loud, very quickly which is not pleasing to everyone.
- Experiment with creating different levels of volume (quiet and loud) by changing these variables: What if I go faster or slower, or with more or less pressure?
- If your wand is vibrating off the bowl, making a buzzing sound, it is as if your bowl saying that it is going as fast as it can. This usually happens because the wall can handle only so much in terms of vibration. Sort of like a car on the highway. It can only go so fast and then it starts to shake.
- When this happens, I find I have three options.
1)Take my wand off the bowl and just let it sing. When it gets quieter, I then move my wand around the rim to bring up the volume I had intended to hear.
2) Slow down the speed of my wand and add a little pressure to help bring the bowl back under control.
3) Change the way I am am holding my wand. I have noticed that if I hold the wand by the top tip, and let the bottom tip rub the bowl, I will experience more vibrations. Instead, I like to hold the wand like a pencil, closer to the centre and then have the wand touch the bowl about 1" from the bottom of the wand. I like to think of it like a lever. There is more control when there is less space between the two ends.
