Sound
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How to Choose a Crystal Bowl
Clear and Practitioner Bowls
There are three sorts of crystal bowl - clear, practitioner and frosted. Clear bowls are in small sizes (5 to 8 inches in diameter) and completely transparent. They produce a clear, pure note and the smaller ones are quite high pitched. Some clear bowls are capable of producing more than one note according to how low or high up the side they are played. The playing stick is a small hard rubber ball on a handle. Practitioner bowls are clear bowls with a handle fitted to them. They are designed to be hand held rather than placed on a surface to be played.
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Frosted Crystal Bowls
Frosted bowls are larger and heavier and range from 8 to 24 inches in diameter. The larger the bowl the lower the pitch tends to be and the greater the resonance. The largest bowls play very low notes indeed and ring on for over a minute after you stop playing them. There are two types of stick - suede covered wood and a rubber ball stick. We supply the one that works best on any bowl. Suede sticks are generally only needed for 8 or 10 inch bowls. Rubber ball sticks work on most 10 inch or larger bowls and are preferable as they make virtually no noise as they rub round the outside of the bowls.
Large bowls (16 inches or greater) can be quite heavy and cumbersome to transport which is a consideration if you want a bowl to be portable.
Ultimately your choice is a matter of personal preference regarding high or low pitch and length of resonance. We can play crystal bowls over the phone to you which can give a good indication of pitch and resonance.
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Tel: 0118 926 8149
How Crystal Bowls are Made
Frosted Quartz Crystal Singing Bowls
Frosted quartz crystal singing bowls are the most common type of crystal bowl and are so named because of their translucent rather than transparent appearance. This type of bowl was developed for growing quartz crystals to be made into silicon chips. Absolute purity and cleanliness are essential for this so the quartz powdered used for making these bowls is highly purified - only a few parts per million of impurities are allowable.
The bowls are made using a carbon mould. This is spun and a metal arm follows the shape of the mould a few millimetres from the inside surface. Quartz powder is poured in to the rotating mould. Electricity causes an arc to jump to the mould and the heat from this fuses together the particles of quartz to form the bowl. This is all done in an enclosed computer controlled machine. The crystal bowl is removed from the mould when it has cooled and the top rim is cut to height. Looking at frosted bowls you can see the graininess on the outside caused by the small pieces of quartz used in its construction. The inside of the bowl has a smoothed and polished appearance caused by the electric arc.
Frosted bowls are in larger sizes from about 10 inches (25cm) upwards. They are generally played with a rubber ball stick and a ring is used to hold them steady as the base is rounded.
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Clear Quartz Crystal Singing Bowls
These are made from pieces of clear quartz tubing. A length of tubing is cut and fitted on a lathe. As the lathe slowly turns burners heat the quartz so that the shape of the crystal singing bowl is formed. This is a highly skilled process. Clear bowls are played with a different kind of rubber ball stick which uses much harder rubber. Like the frosted bowl it sits on a rubber ring to keep it steady and make it easier to play.
Quartz Crystal Practitioner Bowls
A practitioner bowl is a clear singing bowl mounted on a tube handle. The handle is welded to the clear bowl. Other producers of practitioner bowls have had problems caused by a weakness where the heat used to weld the handle has set up a stress causing breakages to happen. Our manufacturer has perfected this process and removes the stresses after the welding.
Practitioner bowls are played by holding the handle in one hand and using a hard rubber ball stick as with clear bowls to produce the sound. Obviously no rubber ring is needed.
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Chakras and Musical Notes
There are various systems linking different notes with chakras. The most commonly used is this one:
- C Base
- D Sacral
- E Solar Plexus
- F Heart
- G Throat
- A Third Eye
- B Crown
In our experience we have found that any bowl seems to work where it is needed and when we use bowls we do not worry about which notes they are.
There are also other systems which start from different notes and a system which attributes diameters of bowls to chakras.
Playing with intent or using suitable crystals can be used to direct bowl energy to specific chakras.
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