SD029 GONGS

GONGS?
They just go dong, right?

Hell no – dong is just the beginning.. watch the vid!
We've been experimenting and recording a total of 14 Gongs, and over the last three months have extracted some haunting and visceral sounds. We started off with percussive articulations using a wide range of mallets. Then we moved on to extended techniques involving friction mallets, superballs & contact mics, eventually arriving at a sound reminiscent of a bear with a sore head, a whale with indigestion…
or maybe just Chewy with an epic hangover…

You might think you know what a gong sounds like, and so did I when I started recording this library….
But after experimenting with some new techniques, the sounds produced reminded me less of a gong, and more of a bear with a sore head – I was not expecting creature vocal elements from these sessions but thats exactly what appeared in front of my contact mics.

In total we captured three giant TamTams (and frankly went a little crazy waiting for the 45 second decay) 4 Thai gongs, each with beautiful pitch, followed by a set of 4 Chinese Opera gongs (which do a very strange, natural pitch bend up). Lastly we captured 2 Vietnamese gongs, plus a resonant mini gong… Oh and one crotale… why? Because it was there!

A range of mallets was used with each, along with brushed textures. The final experiments involved hanging each of the gongs and spinning them on their axis – the complex doppler tones produced are simply gorgeous. The final result is an inspiring 12GB library of highly malleable sounds, rich with potential for many evocative aspects of sound design.

UPDATE 20170707: we pursued further recording with our assembled collection of Gongs, capturing centre and edge bowed articulations using a vintage double bass bow and a lot of rosin to reveal gorgeous rich textures. Free 1.2GB update is included with this library (previous owners receive update today 20170707)