Training is led by Aidan McIntyre and Tim Byford, with the help of guest teachers who bring their own host of talents and skills to the workshop.
Gong Master Training will help you along the road to Mastery in the use of Bespoke Sound as a transformational tool in the service of Humanity. Each day during the training, we'll be working with different sacred instruments; to learn how to use them in performance and healing for others as well as ourselves.
We will try and emphasise all areas of Gong Mastery depending on the needs of the students. Topics will include Gong Playing Techniques, (including the many different strokes and the use of the many types of mallets), using Singing Bowls, Conch Shells, and many other instruments both ancient and modern whether man - made or sourced from Nature.
You can play the gong even if you are musically illiterate but brawn certainly helps, as the larger mallets are heavy — to say nothing of the object itself. Most gongs are played on a stand because they are too heavy to hold. Modern gongs are made mostly of copper or bronze, with an amalgam of other metals including tin, brass, iron, lead, zinc or nickel. There are flat gongs and hammered gongs, constructed from a metal disc of bronze alloy. To shape the instrument into its full range of frequencies can take many months. They range in price from a few hundred to tens of thousands of pounds.
McIntyre shows you how to play smaller, hand-held gongs and explains numerous strokes and techniques, with names such as pendulum, heartbeat, swinging, whirling and muffling. Practise with a range of mallets and also with small rubber balls called flumies. These are dragged along the surface of the gong to create high harmonics. The tones that are emitted are sometimes likened to dolphin and whale noises. Hawkwood College will be the GMT home for the foreseeable future. Hawkwood is an educational charitable establishment founded on Rudolf Steiner’s antprosophical values and located in a beautiful location on the edge of Stroud in Gloucestershire. To learn more about Hawkwood college click here