I’ve been looking for a teacher/mentor to help me achieve my goal of learning to compose music in a year and have come across Charlie, an inspirational music teacher based locally. I had my first lesson last week where Charlie set me my first a piece of music to compose. I’ll go into more detail as I have something to listen too but reassuringly Charlie believes my goal is possible, albeit challenging, and will be dependent on my commitment.
To assist my first project, Charlie has asked me to do a bit of research into Balinese Gamelan music, with a hint to look specifically at sections.
My first impression of the sounds was a cacophony of bells and gongs
If I’m honest I initially found Balinese Gamelan music hard on my ears. Having been brought up an auditory diet of mainly western music, my first impression of the sounds was a cacophony of bells and gongs. It took me persistence and repeat listening to begin to appreciate Gamelan music as the complex soundscape it is.
Structure
Essentially Gamelan music is made up of gongs, metallophones and drums called kendhang that all combine to play a single melodic line. Each layer (low, mid or high) plays all or part of the melody at different tempos and/or rhythms together but also in sync (interlocking) with one another. It is interesting to see how the phrase is split amongst instruments.
Having a single melodic structure like this is known as Heterophony and with Gamelan specifically, these melodic structures are often made up of two different scales Slendro (a five-note scale) and Pelog (a seven-note scale).
As a general rules with Gamelan music, the interlocking layers consists of:
- The lower the pitch the longer the note played.
- The highest pitch is played very fast
- There are 4 beats groups called Keteg
- Gongs of different sizes are used for each Keteg cycle.
A method of creating these interlocking layers in Balinese Gamelan is Kotekan. This is usually achieved by 2 voices (often higher pitched instruments) playing alternating notes within a scale for example.
There is also often a melody called Pokok played by lower gongs that interlocks with the Kotekan.
From this I am starting to get an understanding and ideas on how different pitched voices could potentially be combined together.
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