Melody Bowl in Ash – 12string

Description

The 12-string Melody Bowl is a lightweight performance instrument with a good range to sing with. A wide range of tunings in both modern and ancient scales adds flexibility to the type of instrument I most like to perform with. Ash gives the tone an intrinsic sense of reliability and confidence. Base notes are particularly rich.

This tree appears to have had barbed wire grown into it. This often happens when farmers use available trees in place of putting in posts for a fence. The black patches are iron-reaction and the crazy-contour lines are where fungus entered the wound. Now dry, all that is inert and adds to this piece the sort of beauty that arises through overcoming difficulties.

The sound samples show just two of the many different ways the bowl can be tuned.  The Mixolydian is a G-Major scale from D. The other is an ancient scale used in Celtic music over many thousands of years, right up to the tweed weavers of the late C20th.

As with all larger Sounding Bowls, this one comes with a hard case, soft lined and padded, as well as an auto-tuner and manual.

As a personal music-maker, this instrument can lead you into harmonies, inwardly and outwardly, that calm and enrich the soul, countering the divisive effects of today’s technology.

As a sound-healing tool, this can provide fine-tuned, individually responsive sessions that touch deep into the heart.

Click below to listen in a Mixolydian mode.

Or to the track below, tuned to a Hebridean Pentatonic.