Gong Playing Techniques

In this video I demonstrate various gong playing techniques using different mallets: Paiste M1, Paiste M6, Innovative Percussion CG2, Mike Balter GM4, Mike Balter WG1, Vic Firth Sound Power GB1, and various friction mallets (Yin Yang, Mike Balter, eWand). The gong I'm playing in this video is a Paiste 32" Symphonic.

Alexandre Tannous is as a musician, educator, composer, and an ethnomusicologist. He holds a Bachelor of Music in Theory and Composition, and a Master of Arts degree in Music Education from Columbia University Teachers College. As a recipient of the Mellon Fellowship he also earned a Master of Arts and a Master of Philosophy degrees in Ethnomusicology from Columbia University where he was enrolled in the PH.D. program. He has taught at Columbia University and is a frequent guest-lecturer at universities, institutions, and museums. As an ethnomusicologist, he has conducted fieldwork for 17 years in over 40 countries around the world.

For the past 15 years he has been researching the therapeutic and esoteric properties of sound from three different perspectives - Western scientific, Eastern philosophical, and shamanic societal beliefs - to gain a deeper understanding of how, and to what extent, sound has been used to affect human consciousness. This search has led him to the intersection where art, science, philosophy and spirituality intersect. His ethnomusicological approach entails a social scientific study of sound use in several traditional contexts—religious, spiritual, holistic, and cultural—for various purposes and occasions in entertainment, worship, meditation, and rituals of healing and trance. Consequently, his approach in researching, understanding, experiencing, transmitting, and working with sound has always been based on a multidisciplinary approach.

The material he transmits about sound is based on thorough research over many years: observations he made during his fieldwork, scientific studies, personal experiences, and data collected from thousands of people he has worked with doing sound therapy. This has led him to a deeper understanding of how sound reveals and unlocks hidden powers we have within us to promote profound inner changes and healing.

Inspired by his findings, he designed a protocol of an integrated experience he calls “Sound Meditation” in which he shares the findings from his research, raising an awareness to how a specifically designed sound can have the ability to help us to disconnect from habitual patterns while judiciously listening to the specific traditional instruments he plays. He employs a phenomenological approach to study the effects of sound, using a method that empowers the participants to engage actively with tools that enhance their experience, using the consciousness-altering properties of sound to heighten self-awareness, to connect to the higher self, to fine-tune self-observation, and to attain self-realization.

He currently works as a sound therapist, teaches this practice, and lectures about sound.

For more information please visit www.soundmeditation.com

Filmed by Jeremy Morris in 2015 and edited by James Reed in 2016.