Tibetan Singing Bowls

Strike a bowl, or make it sing

Seven bowls, tuned to a scale. Tap one to strike it, or switch to Sing and hold it down to draw the tone out, the way a mallet circles the rim. Each bowl is synthesized live, with the slowly beating overtones that make a real bowl shimmer. Use headphones or good speakers.

100 Hz1 kHz5 kHz

Tuning

Sound

Sound bath

Lets the bowls play by themselves, one strike at a time, with silence between them.

About the sound

A struck bowl rings at its fundamental plus overtones at about 2.7, 5.2 and 8.3 times that pitch. Each overtone is a pair of oscillators a hair apart, so it swells and fades a few times a second. That beating is the "wah-wah" you hear from a real bowl. Higher overtones die away faster.