Two threads ran through my life for a long time before they met. One was technical - electronics, audio engineering, the discovery of how a signal behaves and how, as sound, it can powerfully affect our state of mind. The other was quieter: an interest in what happens when a person stops “thinking” and simply listens.
My first gong session was at the Pyramids of Chi in Ubud, Bali. I went in without much expectation and came out understanding that my life had been heading somewhere for years without my knowing it. Pivotal is not too strong a word. The gong is where those two threads met, and I have followed it since.
Forest Resonance is in Buxted, East Sussex. The studio is immersed in nature. Upon arrival, visitors settle quickly - the setting does that, long before the first gong sounds.
Sessions go under a few names: Sound journeys, Gong baths, Dream Machine sessions. Each has its own character and its own way of reaching you; where they lead is much the same.
The vibration beds are not a separate offering, they can optionally be part of any session. The vibration is carried through the frame of the bed, so you feel the deep low end as much as you hear it; through the legs, the back, the sternum. A somatic experience rather than a purely acoustic one, which is often why it lands with people who arrive convinced they are too analytical for any of this.
My intention for the experience is an honest one: to facilitate a safe and welcoming space, somewhere visitors can put things down for 90 minutes and have the opportunity to re-connect with their one true self.
Gongs, bowls and tubular bells are the centre of it, but they are not alone in the room. I build immersive layers underneath them: recorded nature, synthesiser drones held long enough that you stop hearing them as sound and start hearing them as space, and textures derived from binaural beats, bilateral harmonics and isochronic tones.
That last group is deliberate. Theta and delta describe the slow end of brainwave activity; theta the drifting territory between waking and sleep, delta the deep end below it. The tones are built around those ranges, so the sound underneath a session is structural rather than decorative: something slow and steady for the nervous system to settle towards. I make no larger claim than that, and I keep it seamless - if you notice it, I have overdone it.
There is also the Dream Machine, a hypnagogic light device descended from the flicker work of Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville, experienced with the eyes closed.
I'm also now working with Andromeda Gongs which are hand-made by the artisanal gong maker Jesse Blauwhof, and they are the foundation of everything here. Working together, it is our joint intention to bring these unique sonic creations to a wider audience in the UK - all in the service of sound.
Choosing a gong is not a catalogue exercise. It is worth standing in front of several and finding the one that answers.
The next step is a weekend on the 26th and 27th of September, when the gongs come to the studio and you can hear the range of them in one room, with demonstrations and a Q&A by the maker himself. Details at forestresonance.com/gongfestival.
Forest Resonance runs sessions and small-group workshops in Buxted, East Sussex. If any of this speaks to you, you would be very welcome.
www.forestresonance.com
