Tibetan bowl

These bowls come from a metalworking tradition across Nepal, Tibet, northern India and Bhutan, where sheets of bronze-based alloy are heated and hammered into shape by hand. Older bowls were household and ritual objects rather than instruments for a class. Because every bowl is hammered differently, no two sound the same, and the irregularity is what makes the tone complex rather than clean — a good one keeps revealing new partials for half a minute after you strike it.

What they are for in a session is the low, textured end of the sound. Crystal bowls are bright and precise; hammered metal is rough and layered, and it is the family that produces the strong slow beating most people feel in the chest. They are also the bowls more often placed on the body, because the alloy transmits vibration into tissue readily.

In a KEO session, the hammered bowls are the ones Ben plays closest to the group, usually walking slowly between mats so the sound arrives from a different direction each time rather than from a fixed point. They tend to carry the middle of a sound session, where the layers are thickest. Buying advice, since people always ask afterwards: hold it, strike it, and judge the sound in your hands — the price of a bowl tells you about its age and metal, not about what it will do for you.