What musical note is my Singing Bowl?
What musical note is my Singing Bowl?
This is one of the most common questions that we are routinely asked by people. The easiest/cheapest way to find this is to use a smart phone app such as N-Track Tuner.
- https://apps.apple.com/au/app/n-track-tuner/id409786458
- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ntrack.tuner&hl=en_AU&gl=US
N track tuner as an example, will give you the frequency as well as the closest musical note (in latin i.e. Do Re Mi) produced by your instrument. Note that singing bowls aren’t precision musical instruments.
Musical Notes and Frequencies
When calibrated to a certain frequency e.g. A4=440 Hz, each musical note has a set frequency associated with it. Refer to the link below for a musical note and frequency table.
https://pages.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html
However, with singing bowls, you will end up close to the set note but it will not be a perfect match (think of an instrument such as a guitar or piano that you tuned a few weeks ago and the tuning has gone slightly off).
Singing Bowls and Overtones
Tibetan/Himalayan singing bowls produce overtones. Therefore, tuners tend to get confused sometimes as they will be recording multiple notes and frequencies produced by the bowl. Without making things too complicated/confusing, note that singing bowls will produce different sounds depending on how, where and with what they are struck. However, we tend to go with the lowest dominating sound we can isolate for the fundamental and the clearest overtone for the high note.
With practice, you may be able to isolate the tones and record some of their notes individually. A ball mallet will be particularly helpful in isolating the lower fundamental. To cross check, you can also check the bowl with the sound of the particular frequency that you have just recorded. N track has a tone generator built in. Another resource is this website which generates tones of any frequency:
https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/
Image above: A piano tuner uses a tuning fork as reference for tuning the keys to a set frequency/note.
We hope that you find this post helpful.