Gamelan Music

This article is about gamelan music. A Gamelan is a bronze orchestra found in various cultures in Southeast Asia which uses upwards of about 13 people.

Core Melody:

It has a core melody calledl Pokok in Bali and Balungan in java. It acts as a skeleton on which all the other parts are based. This is called heterophony but Southeast Asian heterophony is very unusual in that it doesn't have just a melodic line and then another with simple embellishments. It has several simultaneous embellishments that make the original melody virtually unrecognizeable in the new part to the uninitiated. Anyway, the skeleton is played on the Calung in Bali and the Slenthem in Java. It's also played on the Kenongs and Kempul in Java if there are enough of each. The skeleton is related loosely to the Cantus firums of church music and Gregorian chant where a sacred melody was placed in the bass and played two or three times as slow as the original then this became the basis for a new composition.

Melody:

Bali and Java have melodic cadences which are encluturated and not at all what westerners would consider to be a melodic cadence such as the leading tone in classical music going to a member of the next chord or chromatic notes resolving as in jazz. Bali and Java utilize a scale known as Slendro which was and is used in the religious services and edifices for Buddhist and Hindu in Bali and Buddhist and muslim in Java. The Slendro scale is considered to be more dignified and less passionate than the newer scale known as Pelog which sounds angry or sad to the Indonesians because it was developed after the Dutch invasion and a mass suicide of Indonesians upon the prospect of being captured. Pelog is thought to sound like the warfare and soldiers in an altercation. It quickly became popular and is a fairly recent development. The music of pelog of which the Kebyar style in Bali is an example, was never an elitist music of the courts. Balinese Kebyar using pelog is loud, fast, has a grand finale and uses a rhythmic breakdown as a transition after the introduction.

In Bali there are a set of instrumnts that play an interlocking rhythm which are tuned about a quarter step apart and this produces binaural beats. Bali also utlizes cymbals called Ceng Ceng which are not normally used in Javanese music.

The gamelan in Java accompanies performances of the puppet show known as Wayan Kulit usually retelling the Ramayana.

Gamelan composition is colotomic. In processs... More later....

Music ThatAccelerates From 0-60 p. 4

Postmodern music has a lot going for it. Its fresh because it avoids functional harmony without making that an unbreakable rule. People like Chick Corea, Allan Holdsworth and Frank Gambale among others expanded the palette of chord voicings thank you very much. One thing contemporary composers could do more of is cleanse the music of goal oriented progressions because in western musical practice the idea that one had to return to the tonic rose out of the unconscious philosophical orientation of the merchant classes who had become more wealthy even than the church and aristocracy.

They were unconsciously perpetuating the idea that one kind of person was more important than all the others. This created the necessity of the leading tone. Its necessity changed all the diverse modes into major and (harmonic) minor.

In my opinion and the opinion of knowledgeable others this represents big government with a lot of power in one person or group (capitalists/corporations) out of tune with the rest of humanity. Previously, in Gregorian chant, you could start in one mode and end in another on a different step of the scale. This implies local governance and control.

Postmodern music is unfortunately too improvisatory for mass consumption containing almost no examples of outstandingly composed melody whatever. The chords and key often hop around so fast (a skill in itself and not without its beauty) there's no time to state or develop a good melody. That's O.K. as far as it goes but I think even Methany is bored with it now.

Anyway, the microtonalists have alienated the audience completely but it is a direction with a lot of potential if used sparingly in the right hands.

Techno has shown its viability in the rave scene which is an effective use of ritual (usually in the wrong hands however) but it relies too much on technology. Its better if someone can be a musician first and a knob tweaker second.

One of the problems with new age and some world music is it's occasional rejection of everything western. Don't limit me please. And its placing on a pedestal everything foreign, seeing it all somehow as being more spiritual than our own.

Most people can't successfully graft themselves onto an alien religion plagued with all the same problems as our own after cutting themselves off from their own root. This is why the new agers hop around from tradition to tradition at the supermarket of religion known as the new age book store while they starve at the banquet. I like the new age book stores for the comparative religious smorgasbord they offer but, similar to commercials, we need to be media savvy about them. The same goes for the music store.

If a composer desires to illustrate thier philosophical orientation concerning a leader's correct relationship to the people he/she serves, the call and response between leader and chorus often used in African music is effective. To avoid a slavish brainwashed implication, the choruses response should be independent and overlap with the leaders. This reveals the peoples ability to interrupt the leader and speak while he/she is speaking.

To show the group's and leader's complete agreement, the last verse can be sung together. To give a strong expression to individual voices choir members can take turns responding after the leader.

Another trend in post-postmodern music is to use additive techniques. For starters, more extensive use of additive techniques is a fresh approach from what has been done in the past. However, We don't have to start with a tape loop or a melody and only play the first note, then play the first and second, next play the first second and third etc... Its already been done, isn't that effective and fractures the melody.

That method is mostly useful in recreating madness something to which I do not aspire.