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Singing Bowl
Singing Bowl holds one steady pitch, A3 at about 218 Hz, for the full 36 seconds, with no strike and no decay, so somebody played it round the rim rather than striking it. Its overtones fall outside a harmonic series, at 75 and 417 Hz, and the two channels are almost fully decorrelated.
Ready to play
Stack this under rain or a fire, keep the blend, and play it with your screen off. Slo, on iOS, Android and Mac.
What the recording actually contains
Tracking the pitch every half second across the whole file returns 218 Hz every time, roughly 16 cents flat of A3. There is no attack transient and no decay curve, which rules out a struck bowl: this is the continuous tone produced by running a mallet around the rim. The partials sit at 75 and 417 Hz, and 417 divided by 218 gives 1.91 rather than a clean 2.0. That inharmonicity marks out a metal bowl, and it gives the sound a slight roughness a pure tone would lack. The two channels measure almost completely uncorrelated, the most diffuse image of any file covered here.
What can and cannot be said about it
This page describes a recording of an instrument. Singing bowls attract a large body of claims about energy, vibration and healing. No clinical guidance or systematic review backs any of them, and this page makes none. What is true is that it is a steady, wordless, very wide sustained tone that some people like to have running while they sit or read, and that is reason enough to play it.
Nearby: Gregorian Chant is a single sung line, Mystic Flute a solo instrumental phrase, and Troposphere the only other file measured here with a comparably wide image. See the sound library index for everything, or give the bowl a bed with the Singing Bowl and brown noise blend in the free sound mixer.
Frequently asked questions
Is the bowl struck or played round the rim?
Played round the rim. The tone holds steady for the full 36 seconds with no attack transient and no decay, which a struck bowl would show.
What pitch is it?
A3, measured at 218 Hz, about 16 cents flat of standard concert tuning, and it does not vary across the file.
Does a singing bowl have any physical effect?
Nothing supports a claim of that kind. No clinical guideline or systematic review backs the healing properties people commonly attribute to singing bowls. Play it if you like the sound.
Why does the tone sound slightly rough?
Its partials sit inharmonically, at 75 and 417 Hz against a 218 Hz fundamental, so they do not line up into a clean harmonic series the way a plucked string would.