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Singing Bowl
Singing Bowl holds one steady pitch, a shade under A3, for the full 36 seconds, with no strike at the start and no fade at the end, so somebody played it round the rim rather than striking it. Its overtones don't line up the way a plucked string's do, which gives the tone a slight roughness, and the sound spreads very wide around you.
Ready to play
Put this under rain or a fire, keep the blend you end up with, and play it through the night with your screen off. The Slo app does that on iOS, Android and Mac.
What the recording actually contains
The pitch never moves across the whole file, and it sits a little flat of A3. There is no strike at the front and no fade at the end, which rules out a struck bowl: this is the continuous tone you get by running a mallet around the rim. Its overtones fall outside the tidy series a plucked string gives you, which is what marks out a metal bowl and gives the sound a slight roughness a pure tone would lack. The two sides of the recording are almost unrelated, the widest, most diffuse sound 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 here that spreads as wide. See the sound library index for everything, or put something steady under the bowl 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 strike at the start and no fade at the end, and a struck bowl would have both.
What pitch is it?
A3, a shade flat of standard concert tuning, and it holds that pitch from start to finish.
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 overtones don't line up neatly with the main pitch the way a plucked string's do, so a faint roughness sits under the steady tone.