Gongs

For sound therapy, meditations, sound journeys or sound baths, larger gongs with a deep, long-lasting sound are often chosen and bought. Smaller gongs are particularly suitable for personal sound rituals, imagery journeys, yoga or playing in smaller rooms.

When buying a gong, you should pay attention to the metal composition, the workmanship and a balanced sound. These factors influence how clear, powerful and long a gong sounds after being struck.

At Hess Sound, we visit our production facilities on site regularly. Together with our experienced master gong makers, we carefully coordinate our special sound and quality standards. With us you can buy high-quality gongs that are suitable for different areas of use, from getting started with sound work to use in a therapeutic context, meditation, sound journeys or sound baths.

Whether you should buy a large or small gong and which type it ultimately is therefore depends on various factors. Depending on size, manufacture and materials, the prices of gongs also vary.

TamTam Gongs and Feng Gongs differ mainly in their design, their sound character and their areas of use. Both belong to the group of flat gongs.

A Feng Gong is made of thinner metal and has no rim or only a narrow one. This creates an open sound that builds up slowly with a broad spectrum of overtones. TamTam Gongs have a clearly flanged rim. This design produces a denser, more powerful and long-lasting sound with a pronounced resonance.

Both types of gong are suitable for sound work. Which one suits you better depends mainly on which sound character and area of use you prefer.

Feng Gongs produce an open sound that builds up slowly with many overtones and are particularly suitable for meditations, yoga, sound journeys and personal sound rituals. TamTam Gongs develop a denser, more powerful sound with a long-lasting resonance and are often used in sound baths, sound work and in group and seminar settings. Which gong you should ultimately buy depends on which sound experience and application you prefer and what price you would like to pay.

Feng Gongs with a diameter of about 45 to 60 cm are suitable for beginners. They are versatile, easy to play and produce a balanced sound that can be used in meditations, yoga sessions and sound journeys. If you prefer a more powerful sound, you can also start by buying a smaller TamTam Gong. What matters is that size, sound character and area of use match your personal ideas.

Feng Gongs and TamTam Gongs are often used in sound therapy, meditations, sound journeys, yoga and sound baths to create a calm and held atmosphere.

Many people experience the long-lasting sounds and vibrations as relaxing. Higher sounds can help strengthen focus and gain more clarity, while lower sounds can have a stabilizing and grounding effect. However, how a gong sound is actually perceived is individual.

Depending on its size and the related frequency, a Feng Gong or TamTam Gong can also have a stronger or weaker effect on different areas of the body. In sound work, it is often described that small gongs with very high frequencies particularly address the head area, medium-sized gongs with medium frequencies the chest area, and large gongs with low frequencies the abdominal area. However, perception is always individual.

The sound of a gong is determined mainly by its size, shape, material and playing technique. Larger gongs usually produce lower, long-lasting sounds, while smaller gongs often sound higher. The striking point also determines the sound: striking the center produces a pleasantly deep sound, striking the rim a high sound.

Which size your Feng or TamTam Gong should be depends entirely on how and where you want to use the gong and what sound character it should have. Smaller Feng and TamTam Gongs are well suited as signal instruments, for personal sound rituals or to accompany yoga sessions. Larger gongs produce a deeper, room-filling sound and are often used for meditations, sound journeys, sound baths or in sound therapy.

The following sizes serve as a guide:

• From 30 cm: compact, clear sound, ideal as a signal gong or for smaller rooms
• From 45 cm: versatile sound with a greater dynamic range
• From 70 cm: deep, long-lasting sound for meditation, sound journeys and sound therapy

The sound of a TamTam or Feng Gong depends on its design, size, materials and playing technique. Feng Gongs usually produce an open sound that builds up slowly with a broad spectrum of overtones. TamTam Gongs, on the other hand, often sound more powerful, deeper and denser and develop a long-lasting, room-filling resonance. The larger a gong, the more voluminous and usually also the deeper its sound.

Besides the design, the striking technique and the gong mallet or friction mallet used also influence the sound. Before buying an instrument, consider in which setting and for what purpose you mainly want to use your gong.

Hess Sound® Premium Gongs stand out for particularly careful handwork, intensive sound testing and high quality standards. The manual production of our gongs involves many forging steps that make each gong unique. After production, the gongs are individually tested and listened to. Only gongs that meet our high quality standards for sound and appearance in every respect receive the Hess Sound® Premium Gong seal and are finally available in our online shop. The second-best quality, which is still very high by comparison, receives the Hess Sound® Classic Gong seal. Classic quality is therefore the somewhat more affordable alternative.

The many years of experience of Peter Hess and of sound work feed into the development and selection of Hess Sound Gongs and form a valuable foundation for our high standards of sound quality and workmanship.

The Nickel Silver Gongs from Hess Sound stand out for their high-quality craftsmanship, their clear, balanced sound and their precise workmanship.

Each Nickel Silver Gong is made exclusively from high-quality nickel silver by careful handwork in a small family business in Germany. The renowned Broder Oetken workshop is known for traditional forging craftsmanship and exceptional sound quality. The Nickel Silver Gongs were made exclusively for Hess Sound with experience, precision and dedication. The result is durable instruments with a harmonious sound character that are suitable for meditation, sound work, sound baths and professional use.

The gong is an instrument that originally comes from Southeast Asia and is one of the oldest known musical instruments in the region. Although its exact origin has not been clearly established, historical centers of gong culture include present-day Myanmar (Burma), China, Vietnam (Annam) and Java.

From a musicological point of view, gongs belong to the metal idiophones, that is, musical instruments whose sound is produced by the vibration of the metal itself. In Southeast Asia, they are among the oldest and most important musical instruments.

The so-called “kettle drums”, bronze drums, are recognized as the forerunners of gongs. From them, various forms of gongs developed, such as Feng and TamTam Gongs, which spread over the centuries along the Silk Road as far as Japan.