Fish Gong

I brought home a recording that I bought in the gift shop, of chanting and bell ringing at Haein-sa temple. I was listening to it on my computer, watching the frequency distribution of the sound when they rang the large bell. They'd strike the bell and the low tones would sustain for a long, long time, the waterfall of blue on my screen drifting slowly down. Another strike, another slow drift down.

Then they started hitting the Mok-o. Tap! Tap! Tap! And the low tones drifted up and up, higher even than when the bell was struck! I couldn't really hear it, because my speakers don't go that low, but I could see that the Mok-o makes the bell ring.

Then they stuck the brass gong a few times, and it just shut the bell right off!

Maybe it was really just an artifact of the recording, but I am looking forward to getting back there to hear with my own ears!

This is a Mok-o, a wooden fish chime. It symbolizes "the salvation of all living things in the water and [is] a means of arousing the ascetic who may have succumbed to sloth."

From the Koreana Webzine