Standards are important. It is my intention to operate with as much clarity and transparency as is reasonable and standards are my way of communicating how I go about doing this. Throughout the course of my career in the world of natural and organic products I have been responsible for both developing and adhering to national and international standards. As one of the founders of Maggie’s Organic Products I helped establish the standards for organic cotton clothing. This section outlines the standards I use in my approach to acquiring and describing singing bowls.
Sound Quality * * Appearance & Cosmetics * * Musical Notes & Octaves
Best Singing Bowl’s Sound Quality Standards
The singing bowls I select all have complexity, balance and sweetness. Just because a singing bowl has some great tones or goes woo-woo it doesn’t mean it is a great singing bowl. The sounds in a singing bowl have to hang together well and the bowl itself needs to hold at least some of the tones for a good period of time. All the singing bowls I sell are multi-tonal with at least two but often three or four distinct tones. Simply put, what you see on the Best Singing Bowls website are examples of the best sounding antique Tibetan and Himalayan singing bowls available anywhere. I will match any singing bowl I sell against the quality available from any other vendor of genuine antiques.
All the singing bowls you’ll see on this site are great sounding antique singing bowls. Best Singing Bowls have sonic characteristics that are rated at the top of the scale in Nepal. On a statistical basis I would say maybe a quarter of the old brass bowls coming out of the countryside have musical qualities and of these maybe a quarter (say the top 5% ) are top quality quality bowls. Of this group I would probably choose 15-20% for Best Singing Bowls. In other words the singing bowls I choose are in the top 1% of bowls available. The rest of the top quality singing bowls sound very good but are weak in some sonic element that I consider important like balance or sweetness. While it takes a good ear to hear differences between excellent bowls, I believe we are all sensitive to deep harmonies on a subconscious level. You can feel the difference, especially when you play a singing bowl over time.
The Best But Not ALL the Best
Is Best Singing Bowls the only place to buy singing bowls of this character? Definitely not. Singing bowls travel a number of paths out of the Himalayas. There is a supply of really expensive A+++ quality singing bowls, based on a combination of size, uniqueness and sheer beauty that exceeds anybodies ability to purchase them all. However there are websites and stores that sell a range of singing bowls without differentiating old from new let alone premium quality sound from average. It takes a lot of knowledge and effort to be clear about what you are buying and communicate well. Best Singing Bowls is focused on the top end of the singing bowl market and deals exclusively in spectacular sounding antique Himalayan singing bowls.
There is another big factor in judging singing bowl quality; the human factor. The incredible complexity of the sounds in a premium quality singing bowl defy a totally dry objective analysis. Just to be clear here – what I’m saying above has to do with top tier singing bowls, not 95-98% of what is out there – but among the highest quality singing bowls “best” has to do with taste as well. What I sell says to me both “that’s an incredible singing bowl” and “I like it”. The singing bowls I bring in are also ones that make me feel good when I hear them, I reject an occasional top quality singing bowl because of some subtle reaction in my gut.
Singing Bowl Appearance and Our Cosmetic Standards
One aspect used to judge singing bowl quality is cosmetics, how a bowl looks. Singing bowls can be plain, come with simple lines or have elaborate ornamentation and inscriptions. They can be in various states of preservation and can be of an unusual or rare style. Tibetan singing bowls can be clear, have attractive patina and intrusions or unattractive staining. Simply put, some singing bowls do have more eye appeal than others.
Cleaning
The majority of singing bowls I sell have been cleaned by hand in Nepal both during regular use and in preparation for sale. Home cleaning – what has happened to a bowl in the time before it entered the singing bowl supply chain – can range from gentle to harsh. For the most part cleaning is of the gentle kind with water, possibly soap and cloth. When you see old worn singing bowls you can imagine how many cleanings they must go through before the end up with the type of wear evident on them. On the not so gentle side cleaning can be with sand, scouring powders even caustic chemicals. I see an occasional spectacular sounding antique singing bowl that has been cleaned out with a power tool like a router. Yes… an antique handmade singing bowl with machine marks! When the cleaning is superficial what you get is a singing bowl with its original patina. Chemically cleaning singing bowls can also result in nice patina though not an original one. Some big Jambati and ceremonial singing bowls have been obviously cared for well and evidence little wear.
Hard as it may be to believe some singing bowls have been used as cooking pots on top of wood fires and have a thick black coating on the bottom. They can be coated so badly you really can’t hear them clearly. This is more true of smaller singing bowls that have been kitchen implements for the last century or so than largersinging bowls that might have been used for grain storage or even occupied a place of honor in a home. When I go through raw singing bowls sometimes I have to just hope the potential in a dirty bowl is realized when it has been cleaned. Just how far to go in cleaning is up to the buyer – at least if they are handling singing bowls in Nepal prior to export prep. If a singing bowl can be left with it’s original patina, even if that is a less than attractive stain, my numismatic background biases me against over-cleaning and I instruct my people in Nepal to hand wipe with cloth.
Buffing and Polishing
I must admit I do like the look of brightly polished singing bowls. The mix of metals in antique singing bowls lend themselves to intensive cleaning and some can be buffed to an incredible new luster which can be quite attractive. That being said, you won’t find any singing bowls buffed to brilliance on this website. I have been doing some experimentation and one of these times I’m over there I’ll make it a focus. At the present time I am providing bowls in the closest to a natural state. If you prefer the new look you can take a Best Singing Bowls singing bowl with original patina and buff it with the caveat that you are removing metal and there is always a slight risk that the tone will change subtly.
Looks are Only Skin Deep
While each of my singing bowls has the character you would expect from an individually handmade antique, looks are secondary from my perspective. When I’m ringing away I don’t really care what the singing bowl looks like, I’m all ears. I label singing bowls by type, preservation and markings but that comes after choosing them for sound. I leave behind lots of impressive looking singing bowls that are thin on sonic profundity.
Unlike some sellers who won’t handle a singing bowl with less than sparkling cosmetics I will buy discolored, scratched or even cracked singing bowls that have incredible sound. I try to be scrupulous about labeling these flaws and will document them with photos as well as notes. If looks are really important you can steer around them but some of the best values are in these flawed “not so beauties”.
Cracks
Cracks are one of those things you need to contend with in antique singing bowls. Some singing bowls have cracks from the original artisan work but most have to do with handling. Cracks high up on a singing bowl make it unsuitable as an instrument as do cracks over about an inch in length. Cracks in the very bottom of a singingbowl are generally benign as are surface cracks that you can see on only one side. My standard is if the crack has the slightest impact on the sound it is a reject, if it seems stable, not likely to change and I can’t hear it I will buy the singing bowl. Singing bowls can have hidden cracks. You can’t see them, sometimes you can’t even hear them but you can feel them. I always leave these behind because there a chance the crack will grow with playing.
Standards for Assigning Musical Notes and Octaves
Every singing bowl has a strongest sound that you first hear when you play it. It may not be the most memorable tone and is often not the longest lasting tone but it is the the most immediately apparent one. I use this tone to assign the note and octave to a singing bowl. The way I determine the note is to strike singing bowls with a mallet that does a good job of bringing out the complete range of tones and have a Korg electronic tuner read the sound and assign the note. This way the notes I assign have an objective basis.
I arrange singing bowls in a frequency hierarchy to assign the octave. Currently I have singing bowls in five octaves which I label very low, low, middle, high and very high. A tiny manipuri middle octave C is going to give you the same general tone as a massive middle C thadobati.
I find that sitting a single singing bowl next to a tuner and ringing it to get a note is asking for trouble. The singing bowls are so complex and so idiosyncratic that often the tuner throws up wildly disparate notes. The way I have confidence in the notes the tuner generates is that I use a database and reference singing bowls so I have a good idea what the note should be based on the sound of hundreds of singing bowls arranged in tone sequence.
Since nobody in the Himalayas ever made one of these bowls with the Western music scale in mind it is rare to get a singing bowl that is exactly the note it is labeled. For the most part they are a little above or below note whether the readout tells me a whole note, sharp or flat. While the Korg tuner does provide a readout of how far away from perfect pitch the sound is I do not have sufficient confidence in the stability of this readout to include in in singing bowl descriptions. If you hit a singing bowl on the side away from the tuner you will get a slightly different reading then hitting it on the same side of the tuner. A warm singing bowl might ring a bit different from a cold singing bowl.
Some singing bowls are right on the cusp between note labels and the note assigned is based on a judgment call. For these reasons use the note assignment as a guide rather than a specification. My labeling will never be a full note off but a sharp or flat, maybe so.
