The diversity of sound and noise with a gong and mallets is hard to classify. However there are many sound qualities possible. On one hand soothing pitches and volumes are produceable, and on the other you can really cause a headache. The soothing sounds that were made were made with constant motion of the mallets that caused a sort of relaxing vibration just like the low-gain speed-picked guitar parts played at low volume sometimes cause.
On the edge of comforting sounds and discomforting noises was a level at which the gong produced soothing notes each time the mallets hit producing notes that were added pitches to the noise of the loudly ringing gong. The mallet notes were like computer sounds but somehow soothing as the loud gong rung your ears in slight pain. At the other end of the spectrum were the loud noises, and this occured when the mallets were ringing the gong loud enough that the added pitches could no longer be heard and the gong rang in your eardrums much louder.
The main point this blog is just showing the effects of dynamics. The fact that you can produce nearly entirely soothing sounds, utter noise, and a mix of the two with the same set of instruments is pretty awesome, and is a good example of a way to structure music that is less common that just having more types of instruments.
Christian Lundeen
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