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A gong’s voice is not defined by metal alone. The mallet is not an accessory — it is an extension of the instrument itself. I have heard players describe a gong as “too harsh”, “slow to open”, or “lacking depth”. In many cases, the issue is not the gong. It is the mallet. Understanding how mallet construction interacts with metal, profile and playing technique is essential if you wish to hear the instrument as it was intended. The Mallet as Part of the Acoustic System When a

a documentary on the making of titanium gongs This short documentary offers an insight into Barry Mason’s approach to crafting titanium gongs for sound therapy and contemplative practice. Working with titanium requires patience, sensitivity and a deep understanding of how material responds to form. Over time, a quiet dialogue develops between hammer, surface and resonance. The film captures this process — not as spectacle, but as steady, attentive work. Each instrument emerge

Ever since I forged my first singing bowl about 15 years ago, I have accepted the paradigm that hammering the entire surface of a bowl, bell , cymbal or gong is the only way to create a quality and well tuned instrument.  However in the Summer of 2023 I had the opportunity to play a titanium gong created in America by Ross Barrable ( https://crystaniumgongs.com ) which appeared to have no hammer marks at all!  I was impressed by what a saw and heard, and wanted to learn more

Cymaglyph of TI 11 gong fundamental Courtesy of John Stuart Reid It is exactly 3 years since I heard my first titanium gong , and decided that I just had to have a go at making one! My partner Lina and myself heard a beautiful Martin Blaise gong at our friend Jonathan Barnetts house. Jonathan runs “Soundtravels” and has bought and sold hundreds if not thousands of quality gongs over the years. He treated us to a demonstration of his own private collection of his own hand pi

Photo Courtesy of Bear Love When I first discovered the gong, at nearly all the sessions that I attended, the gongs were played with soft faced (sheepskin or wool wound) traditional mallets . I think the first time that I saw a gong played in a non-traditional way was at a lecture and demonstration by Manfred Bleffert . He played his own hand made instruments with home made bows and also what looked like a large rectangular block of rubber mounted on a long wooden stick, tha

Photo courtesy of Cymascope.com Way back in the 1970s I was a fine art student. I was fortunate indeed to have a number of great tutors, but the one outstanding influence on me was Keith Critchlow. His lectures on sacred geometry were a marvel and a great source of inspiration to several of my contemporaries as well as myself. Nearly all my paintings, sculpture and now gongs and sound instruments have had their genesis in his teaching. With Keith we surveyed Chartres Ca

In conventional gong making , the material grows harder and harder the more that one hammers, and this can lead to brittleness and even cracking if taken to extremes. Brass and bronze alloys are therefore frequently re-heated and slowly cooled in a process called annealing. This returns the metal to its original softer nature. With titanium this is not possible; heating the metal in fact hardens it! However, when all the cold forging is complete, the stresses in the metal

All of my gongs are hand cut and cold forged from large rectangular sheets. Hence there are always several offcuts left over. Being such a valuable material, I have been experimenting with ways to use as much of this as possible, designing and making a range of new sound therapy instruments. One of the paradigms that I have questioned, as well as the one that the best gongs must be of particular alloys, is that gongs have to be circular. Steve Hubback and others have made

The reason that I call my gongs ELEMENTAL I have played percussion for all of my adult life. Cymbals and gongs have always had a hierarchy of alloys as they increase in price and quality. Basic ones are brass (an alloy of copper and zinc), more expensive are bronze (an alloy of copper and tin and sometimes nickel) In the past I have made conventional gongs in these traditional materials, plus a few experimental pieces in stainless steel. A few years ago I purchased a large sh