Recording the Gong
What You'll Experience
An understanding of the different ways a gong can be captured and, more usefully, which one suits you, your budget and the way you work. You’ll have recorded the instruments yourself, listened back, and compared the approaches side by side rather than taking anyone’s word for which is best. There is no single right answer here, and the day doesn’t pretend otherwise: each route has its strengths and its compromises, and you’ll hear them.
You’ll leave with a clear, personal kit list for your own situation, and the confidence to press record without anxiety. The day moves from capturing sound in the air to capturing vibration in the metal itself:
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All-in-one handheld recorders — the Zoom range and similar: simple, portable, built-in microphones.
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Phone-based capture — a DJI Mic 3 paired with an iPhone: wireless and convenient, with its own trade-offs for so dynamic an instrument.
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Microphone and mixer — a condenser microphone into a small mixer: XLR, phantom power, gain staging and monitoring.
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Contact microphones — taking the vibration directly from the metal rather than the air, and why a high-impedance input or buffer makes the difference between full and thin.
Who is this for?
This day is for sound practitioners and gong players who want to capture their own sound properly. Whether to build a personal library of recordings, to release work, or to hold sound sessions remotely for people who can’t be in the room.
It suits anyone whose recordings have never quite held the depth and presence of the live experience. No technical background is needed and nothing is assumed: the day takes it as given that you can play, and teaches you to capture what you play. It’s equally useful whether you’re starting from nothing or already recording and looking for cleaner, fuller, more reliable results.
Recording the gong
one day workshop
The gong is one of the hardest instruments in the world to record. Its sound swings from a whisper to a roar in seconds, reaches far below what most equipment is built to handle, and fills a room in a way a microphone rarely captures on the first try. Most recordings simply don’t hold what it felt like to be there. This one day workshop is designed to give you the skills you need to create exceptional recordings of your instruments in the way they are designed to be listened to.
This is a hands-on day at the Forest Resonance studio spent recording real gongs with premium equipment, and hearing the difference for yourself.