Bang a gong

We went to a friend’s house last night for pizza. In her studio, there were nine 15-30 inch Piaste gongs she’d been given after hanging out a decade ago at the factory in Germany. I’ve always thought of gongs as things that go “boom” or “bong.” Turns out that if you mallet a good big gong repeatedly, a series of harmonic permutations emerge. It’s a kind of layer cake of sound; it’s like you are peeling peals off an orchestral onion. I swear that her big gong gave a twenty second French horn tone and later produced a clear trumpet peal and then a flute… all while roaring and groaning and sizzling and screaming. I’ll add a big Piaste gong to my “list of things to splurge on if I ever win the lottery.”