Interview with a Gong Master
Cover Photo by David Jambrina. Edit by Konstantin Time and Space Photo Tobias Wenning
This time last year, I made a different kind of new Years plan and found a wonderful retreat in Ibiza with my amazing yoga teacher Scarlet who tailored a whole program that included wim hof method, breathwork, yoga, long hikes and a super healthy vegetarian diet. Every day we focused on a specific workshop as well and literally in just a week, I never felt better. It was the only way I wanted to start 2019. One of the workshops we attended was a sound therapy session conducted by gong master Konstantin who goes by the artistic name of Kosma Solarius. this session was the beginning of my long term practice in meditation.
Thank you Konstantin, I know this is a special opportunity and I am grateful you are sharing so much with us today. Also readers If you like the interview, we go a little deeper in the subject of “healing” pls check out my medium piece.
Tell me about yourself Konstantin
I was born in 1972 in the Bavarian Forest in Germany, and am a mix of German and Greek roots.
Everyone in my family creates music so I grew up surrounded by music at home. At 7, I got my first instrument, a blues harmonica and I haven’t stopped playing it since. Around that time my father showed my how to use record players and the mixer so I was introduced to dj’ing as well. At 9, when I got my first computer , the first thing I was interested in was, how to make it sound.
In 1989 I bought a ROLAND MC-303 Groovebox and that was probably the start of my future path as a music producer. DJi’ng was going well so naturally I started organizing club events. I booked an act called Star Sounds Orchestra, which was a legendary psychedelic trance live act. The main band members were Jens Zygar and Steve Shroyder, both legendary artists and when the band turned up Jens brought this huge set of symphonic planet gongs on stage and that was the first time, I experienced these super powerful instruments.
The interesting symbols on the gongs made me curious and after the party I started to do research and I found out that they all had a very special way of being tuned to the orbital frequency of the planets of our solar system. Because I was already a producer, I instantly took my groovebox and started to tune to the Earth Year and I remember, that I created a standing tone, deep and wide, tuned to this frequency and I probably listened to it the rest of the day. This was the starting point for me and later on I would produce music tuned to the planet frequencies. Two years after my first contact with the gongs, I decided to quit my job, gave up my apartment and moved from my little town in the forest to Hamburg city in North Germany. Jens liked the music I produced and invited me to be part of the Star Sounds Orchestra and when I arrived, we immediately got in the tour bus and started touring the festivals all summer.
Collecting experiences for a couple of years with Jens and Steve, I decided to go my own way and in 2007 I left Germany and moved to Koh Phangan, Thailand. An island like a little sister of ibiza, with many parties, the famous full moon party, lots of spiritual activists, yoga centers, retreats and of course diving too.
I went to Phangan, because I had the feeling, that I could reach more with my productions, but I needed time to focus on the work and grow the quality of my productions. In 2009 on I had a resident position at the Half Moon Festival and did the opening shows twice a month for 4 years. The concept was like an electronic jam session. I booked private sessions, retreats, weddings even funerals but when the military coup happened in Thailand, things changed and it became uncomfortable and I knew it was time to move on. I traveled with my gongs and one of my highlights was playing the final concert in the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in Moscow. . In 2017 I moved to Ibiza and I feel like I got settled in really well. I have my regular sessions at Atzaró and Ibango and in summer I specialize playing in villas for private clients. Currently I am preparing a live electronic show with gongs and guest artists called “ Ibiza Soul Artists” - tracks will be tuned to planetary orbital frequencies.
So, I am looking very positive forward for the upcoming season and we will see what happens next.
Let’s discuss Science & the Magic of the Gongs
I was very lucky to meet Jens, because he is the father of the planet gongs.
He had the initial idea to tune symphonic gongs to these planet sounds, which they had experimented with already. Steve was the first musician ever to compose a planetary tuned music track, working together with the Swiss mathematician Hans Cousto, who discovered the so called cosmic-octave calculations, in which the time a planet needs to travel around the sun gets translated into a sound frequency.
Turns out, that each planet got a very unique tuning and this was the big discovery, that the tunings seem to somehow be the soul of music.
If you take for example, a guitar and tune one string slightly up and down, but within the same key, you will realize, that each new tuning has a different character to it. So, the same key, but just slight changes of tuning seem to make a big difference. This is how the idea was born to use these gongs for gong meditations.
In fact, these gongs were the first instruments ever to be tuned to natural frequencies and 4 of my gongs are from this very first series of planet gongs. I like to see them as the Stradivarius of gongs and I feel very proud and I see a great responsibility towards my work as gong master.
Gongs have astonishing results and yes they can be used to treat people with health issues. I am more of a scientific person than a musician in the first place but today many sound practitioners today are very poorly trained. They often come from the spiritual scene and it seems fashionable now for yogis to get gongs and use them after their yoga sessions. There are lots of gong master trainings around the world now and 99% of them are worth nothing. The trainers are often self announced gurus with zero professional training on the gongs. If they are badly trained, and bang their gongs like crazy the result can in fact be very harmful for the receivers.
Your inspirations?
Composer Jean Michel Jarre,
The clean and strong sound of Dire Straits,
the singing guitar of Mike Oldfield, Pink Floyd or Alan Parsons Project.
I love classical music, experimental music, electronic avant-garde and basically anything with real soul and creativity in it.
I can’t stand the copy-clone-culture of the main stream.
I love to be surrounded by nature - it is inspiring and it keeps me calm, but I also find cities inspiring and for sure in a different way.
Making music is a passion and I need it for my personal happiness. If someone wants my music they can find it on Bandcamp.
The “Soft Manner” gong playing technique
The technical and theoretical training of the gong master is for sure the most important, when we talk about sound practitioners and the effects of their work. People often believe “more is better” or “stronger is better”, so they play like they need to scare away some ghosts or demons. Jens Zygar is probably the most advanced gong artist on this planet and he developed and mastered the “soft-manner” style and keeps improving it.
Decades of experience show clearly what works and what doesn’t. It is all about the abilities of the performing person and not about the instrument, the tuning or the tone frequencies. The soft manner is focussing on the idea of integral sound work. Sound practitioners need to have an awaken sensitivity for people and a good portion of musicality is of course essential too. It is useless, if a person has no sensitivity for the clients or the instrument. If the technique isn’t mastered, the gongs will never sound at their best and it is the special skill to make them sound exactly the way we want them to.
When ever you happen to join a sound meditation, please be aware of the danger of overdose type of playing and just leave.
I decided to teach others only two years ago. If you are interested in learning from me have a look at the following link https://kosmasolarius.com/gong-training
I can organize one on one trainings which takes 2 days with 4 hours of theory and practice or if there is a gong student far away we can do an online training.
Best part of living in Ibiza
I enjoy island life and being surrounded by water. Also life in the island is relaxing. I have plenty of space and can open my windows and listen to the birds. Ibiza is just beautiful and there is a lot to discover although I do admit, I stay home a lot. On Tuesday’s there are tribal jam sessions at Ibango, which I love to attend and I like smaller events like Ethereal, when it was at Nagai.
However, I didn’t come here for the birds or the parties, I came here because my customers are here, they understand the magic of my gongs and I offer my private sessions to them all over the island.
Breathe with the Gong
When we are born, the first thing we do is have our first breath and there will be the last breath when we leave our bio-body suits at the end of our lives. I like to explain for all of the readers here a very simple and efficient breathing technique, you can use anytime.
“First, breathe out and empty your lungs. Now inhale for 4 seconds and when your lungs are full, put a smile on and exhale again for also 4 seconds. When your lungs are empty, put on a more serious expression and repeat the process. “
When we breathe in, we fill our lungs with freshly charged air and the little moment between inhaling and exhaling is the magic moment, when we can actually program our selves. This is the moment of delivery, when the energy of the air is getting delivered into our system. We can give this incoming energy an information by a happy emotion with a smile. When we exhale, this is the moment when we get rid of what is used up and not needed anymore.
It is essential to breathe with the gongs, Breathing waves are my main focus when I perform. The effects are truly amazing.
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