Building Your Singing Bowl Collection: A Buyer's Guide

Many customers get in touch with us and tell us that they already own one singing bowl, love it and want to get another one. The question they have is how to choose their second one.  Choosing a second bowl is a different experience from choosing your first. Your first bowl started your singing bowl journey. The second determines the direction of everything that follows - whether that’s creating harmonic resonance, offering contrast in tone, or serving a different energetic purpose. Two bowls played together should create a sound neither could produce alone. That's the whole point of going on to build a set.

Tibetan Singing Bowls are Not Tuned like Modern Instruments

A note about Tibetan singing bowls (when we say Tibetan, we refer to the metal singing bowls). These bowls are not precision tuned like musical instruments. Modern musical instruments play a note that is pitch perfect, i.e. when calibrated to say A4= 440 Hz, a certain note must be at a certain frequency e.g. C3 is set to 131 Hz when measured with a tuner.

Think of Tibetan bowls as slightly out of tune instruments. Your C3 bowl could be 128 or 136 Hz (slightly off pitch), and there is no way to tune these bowls and correct the pitch. A pitch perfect bowl is rare and sheer luck and manufacturers do not pay attention to this. This is why it is very important to play your bowl as you go about your building your set (we suggest that you play your bowl along with the video that we have online and use headphones). You want to make sure that the bowls work together irrespective of what their musical notes are marked to be!

Know the First Bowl You Already Have

Before you shop, spend time with your first bowl again. Notice its fundamental note, the primary and lower tone it sings most clearly. Notice whether it has a bright, high quality or a deep and low resonance. Is it a smaller bowl with a crisp, clear tone, or a larger bowl with a long, rolling ring? Does it feel grounding and heavy, or light and ethereal?

Most importantly, look up and identify its musical note if you can. If you’re unsure of your bowl’s note, you can use a free tuner app (like n Track tuner - for both Android and iOS) while playing your bowl. Hold the phone about 30cm away and strike the bowl gently - the app will detect the dominant frequency and show you the note and frequency. Write it down before you shop for your second bowl.

Choosing Your Second Bowl: Three Approaches

There is no single right answer for what your second bowl should be. It depends on why you use your bowls and what you want to achieve. Here are the three most common approaches our customers take:

1. The Octave Approach — Same Note, Different Register
   
   If your first bowl sings in, say, the note G, you might choose a second bowl that is also a G, but either an octave higher (smaller, brighter, i.e. G3 and G4) or an octave lower (larger, deeper, i.e. G2 and G3). An octave is an eighth note, i.e. identical note but one register higher. 
   When played together, octave-paired bowls create an extraordinarily full, rich sound. The two tones are harmonically identical but experientially very different - one earthly and grounding, one reaching upward. This is a wonderful pairing for meditation, as the dual tones create a sense of completeness.
   
   
2. The Harmonic Interval Approach — Chosen Intervals (in the same register/octave)
   Certain musical intervals create naturally harmonious, pleasing sounds when two notes are played simultaneously. These are the intervals that have been used in healing and music for thousands of years because of the way their frequencies interact. The most beautiful and commonly used intervals for singing bowl sets are:
   
   A. Perfect Fifth: Open, expansive, and deeply meditative. The most universally resonant interval and many sound healers consider this the gold standard in pairing. We recommend this method when pairing bowls and finding one to go with your existing bowl.
   Five full note spaces between the two notes or 7 half spaces (semi tones). Example: C and G. Pentatonic music scales that are often featured in Asian music are based on this system. Please refer to the chart below to see what the perfect fifth for your root note / lower note of your bowl is. If you have a bowl, we recommend listening to a bowl that is a perfect fifth above or below your bowl with headphones and then playing your bowl along with this, to get a feel.
   
   

   Root Note (Lower Note of Your Bowl)	Perfect Fifth	Semitones
   C	G	7
   D	A	7
   E	B	7
   F	C	7
   G	D	7
   A	E	7
   B	F#/Gb	7
   C#/Db	G#/Ab	7
   D#/Eb	A#/Bb	7
   F#/Gb	C#/Db	7
   G#/Ab	D#/Eb	7
   A#/Bb	F	7

   
   B.  Perfect Fourth: Grounded and stable. Creates a feeling of resolution and calm. Example: C and F. Please refer to the chart below to see what the perfect fifth for your root note / lower note of your bowl is. 
   
   

   Root Note (Lower Note of Your Bowl)	Perfect Fourth	Semitones
   C	F	5
   D	G	5
   E	A	5
   F	A#Bb	5
   G	C	5
   A	D	5
   B	E	5
   C#/Db	F#/Gb	5
   D#/Eb	G#/Ab	5
   F#/Gb	B	5
   G#/Ab	C#/Db	5
   A#/Bb	D#Eb	5

   
   C. Major Third — Warm and uplifting. Traditionally associated with the heart. Example: C and E.
   
   

   Root Note (Lower Note of Your Bowl)	Major Third	Semitones
   C	E	4
   D	F#/Gb	4
   E	G#/Ab	4
   F	A	4
   G	B	4
   A	C#/Db	4
   B	D#/Eb	4
   C#/Db	F	4
   D#/Eb	G	4
   F#/Gb	A#/Bb	4
   G#/Ab	C	4
   A#/Bb	D	4

   
   3. The Contrast Approach — Different Character, Same Purpose
   Rather than focusing on musical intervals, some people prefer to choose a second bowl that offers a completely different experience - not necessarily harmonically paired, but serving a different role. For example: a large, deep bowl for grounding work and a small, bright bowl for mental clarity and focus. These two bowls may not always be played at the same time, but together they cover a much wider range of situations and practices. Larger bowls also compliment the lower chakras whilst smaller bowls due to their high pitch work on the upper chakras.
   
   This approach works particularly well for those who use their bowls for different types of meditation, yoga classes, or therapeutic sessions where you want tools suited to different energetic needs.

The Size Relationship

In traditional Tibetan and Nepalese bowl-making, larger bowls naturally produce lower, deeper tones and smaller bowls produce higher, brighter tones. This means, if you are building a set of say three bowls, they will almost certainly follow a visible physical progression from large to small, and there is something visually and ritually pleasing about that. The set tells its own story before a note is even played.

As a rough guide: bowls under 14cm tend to produce high, bright tones; bowls between 14–20cm produce mid-range tones; and bowls above 20cm begin to produce the deep, sustained bass tones that you can feel as much as hear.

The Chakra System as a Guide

Many of our customers who use the bowls for healing, prefer to build a three-bowl set around the chakra system. In this method, each musical note corresponds to one of the seven energy centres of the body. A common three-bowl chakra set might choose notes corresponding to the root (C), heart (F), and crown (B), offering a journey from grounded earth energy through the heart and up to the highest centre of consciousness. This is a deeply intentional approach that gives each bowl a clear purpose in practice.

What is interesting is that chakra-note correspondences vary between traditions. The most common Western system (C = root through to B = crown) differs from some older Tibetan systems that follow five chakras. Don’t get too attached to any single method - instead use it as guidance, and then trust your intuition and your ear. What works best is the best set for you. We all have multiple chakras in our body and every one of us is different.

Ready to Find Your Next Singing Bowl?

Browse our current collection of singing bowls online. Our team can help you find the perfect complement to the bowl you already love.