Gamelan

A gamelan is a musical ensemble of Indonesian origin typically featuring metallophones, xylophone(s), drums, and gongs. Traditionally, the term "gamelan" is used to refer to either the set of instruments making up the ensemble, or the players of those instruments at any given time.

Tuning

The tuning and construction of a gamelan orchestra is a complex process. Gamelans use four tuning systems: sléndro, pélog, degung (exclusive to Sunda, or West Java), and madenda (also known as diatonis, similar to a European "natural" minor scale). In central Javanese gamelan, sléndro is a system with five notes to the diapason (octave), fairly evenly spaced, while pélog has seven notes to the octave, with uneven intervals, usually played in five note subsets of the seven-tone collection. Many orchestras will include instruments in each tuning, but each individual instrument will only be able to play notes in one. The precise tuning used differs from ensemble to ensemble, and give each ensemble its own particular flavour. Colin McPhee (1996) remarks, "Deviations in what is considered the same scale are so large that one might with reason state that there are as many scales as there are gamelans." However, this is a view that is contested by some teachers of gamelan, and there have been efforts to combine multiple ensembles and tuning structures into one gamelan so as to ease transportation issues at the times of festivals. One such ensemble is gamelan Manikasanti, which can play the repertoire of many different ensembles.

Related Topics:
Tuning systems - Sléndro - Pélog - Degung - Madenda - Diatonis - Diapason - Octave

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A peculiarity of gamelans is that, although the intervals between notes in a scale are very close to identical for different instruments within each gamelan, the intervals vary from one gamelan to the next. The occasion for the word approximately is that it is common in Balinese gamelan that instruments are played in pairs which are tuned slightly apart so as to produce interference beating which are ideally at a consistent speed for all pairs of notes in all registers. It is thought that this contributes to the very "busy" and "shimmering" sound of gamelan ensembles. In the religious ceremonies that contain Gamelan, these interference beats are meant to give the listener a feeling of a god's presence or a stepping stone to a meditative state.

Related Topics:
Interference - Beating

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