Experimental Indonesian music and experiemental musical instrument.

Excellent music any way you slice it.

Galeng Galeng

The Galeng Galeng is a Balinese musical instrument. It's not a serious or "professional" instrument. It's mostly just a toy. You shake it and it makes a knocking sound. Galeng is the onomatopaeic world for knock. So the name means the sound it makes which is knock knock knock etc...

Jaap Kunst

Jaap Kunst was born in Groningen on August 12th in 1891. He was a Dutch musicologist and was famous for analyzing the gamelan music of Indonesia. He is the scholar who created the word ethnomusicology because it was more accurate than the existing word "comparative musicology."

He defined it as "the study of music and instruments of all non-European peoples including the so called primitive peoples and the civilized Eastern nations. Kunst is considered to be one of the fathers of contemporary ethnomusicology. He was taught the violin when he was very young. Later he also was very enamored with the folk music and dance of the Netherlands.

He made a recording called Living Folksongs and Dance Tunes from the Netherlands in 1956, which is still for sale. When performing on violin for a trio he was involved with, they toured in the East Indies as Indonesia was known then as part of the sprawling, politically and economically powerful Dutch empire. He made the decision to stay on Java.

While in Java, he found 7,500 gamelan orchestra sets in the region of central Java alone. Since each had a place for about 15 musicians he reasoned there must have been about 150,000 musicians in Java at the time. This meant that 1 in every 100 Indonesians must be a musician.

He took photos, made lists of instruments, made field recordings initially on wax cylinders and wrote books; on the music of Bali in 1925, of Java in 1934, New Guinea in 1967, Nias in 1939 and Flores in 1942.

He also wrote articles; Indigenous Music and the Christian Mission in 1947, Musicologica in 1950, Ancient Western Songs from Eastern Countries in 1934, Music and Dance in the Outer Provinces in 1946, Music of the Kai Islands in 1945 and Two Thousand Years of South Sumatra Retold in its Music in 1952, all for the museum in Jakarta.

He went back to the Netherlands in 1936 and took a post as head of the Royal Tropical Institute. Under his supervision it became the most important center of Ethnomusicology in the West at the time. Much later he also gave presentations at the University of Amsterdam on Indonesian music and began to teach there in 1958.

Jaap Kunst had originally wanted to give his entire collection to the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam but, because of extenuating events, it was given to the University of Amsterdam instead in 1963.

The collection reveals his passion for his field, which contains 2,500 books and professional journals. 3,000 photos, slides and negatives, 7 films, 800 records, tapes and wax cylinders and 8400 letters describing 1250 people written between 1919 and 1960. He died on December 7th in 1960 in Amsterdam.

Gongchime CD

[Newsletter] Gongchime News
Gongchime Times

Welcome to the Gongchime Times

This is the newsletter of The Resplendent Garden of Contemplation Gongchime Rainforest Ensemble, the first Javense gamelan ensemble to reside in Korea dedicated to increasing the awareness and understanding of Southeast Asian music.

In This Issue:

Latest Release

Gongchime CD on cdbaby.

Gongchime has it's CD's address at http://www.cdbaby.com/gongchime.



It has received this review from Gerald Van Waes at Psyche Van Het Folk, Eastern Fusion Review.

A combination of gamelan with varied percussion and what seems like close, multi-colored acoustic arrangements. The feeling completely takes all elements from the east, which makes an unusual vision. A very enjoyable, fresh approach."

Others who have listened to it say they play it for meditation or martial arts work outs. If you've got Hindu gods and beings from the Buddhist pantheon in your house then you need a sound track to match.

My goal had been to create a Southeast Asian rainy jungle. People said they didn't really care much about that though. The reason they liked is was that they wanted meditation music that wasn't too slow and boring.

It turns out that you can put this on and work out or you can lie down and fall into a trance. Nothing is going to cause you to get up and turn a noisy, obnoxious part down.

If you drift into alpha or happen to see a small village in a Southeast Asian jungle in the rain among your visions, say hello to the shaman living there and tell him my job here is finished.

Gongchime: http://www.myspace.com/gongchime http://www.cdbaby.com/gongchime

Gamelan Metal Xyllophones, Bowed Rebab and Gentorag Bell Rattle

Check out the gamelan instruments you can get from Bali in page 3 of my photo albums at www.myspace.com/gongchime. Especially notice the Kendang drums,



Bowed Rebab,



and Gentorag Bell Rattle.



They're available both new and used. Very fun stuff.

Arranging Verses and Choruses

I remembered there are a couple other ways to distinguish verses and choruses. That’s with arranging. Sometimes the chorus is a little faster or has added instruments or is louder or all of the above. I’ve heard people change the groove between sections too but I don’t feel it’s as effective. I think if the new groove is based on the original groove then that works and I’ve done that a lot but a completely new groove often sounds like it should be a separate song.

It’s probably a good idea to listen to your favorite composers and hear what they’re doing concerning all of the points in this thread. I’m good at analysis so I get my hands on scores. That’s the main way how I learned Indonesian gamelan music.

I’ll do something like get a Mariah Carey song book and write out the melodic rhythms of the tunes I like and analyze starting positions, rhythm schemes such as aaab, aaba, and I’ll just put the notes in that tune’s chorus’ starting note such as the first note of the scale or the fifth or whatever.

Here is what an old one looks like in my notebook. About every four lines is a new song. Bridges and transitions such as prechoruses are NOT included. The first four lines are Mariah’s tune Sweetheart, the next four are When You Believe, then Always Be My Baby, One Sweet Day, Dreamlover, Emotions, then U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday which takes up six lines, On New Years Day, the last four lines are their tune In The Name Of Love.

William Russo, in his book Composing Music, recommends writing new melodies to your favorite melodic rhythms.

http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh53/gongchime/MariahU2Marley.jpg

Sitar In Southeast Asia

There is a style of music that sometimes utilizes the sitar in Indonesia. It's called Kroncong or Keroncong. It originally consisted of a bowed rebab fiddle, bamboo Suling flute and Sitar as well as the usual gongs and hand drums.

It comes from the 16th century. Sailors had Portuguese instruments and music which they brought with them on their travels. When the Portuguese music was combined with local elements it created Keroncong.

It was originally associated with the lower class. Recently it has evolved into a style that uses electric bass for the gong, electric guitar to replace the sitar, violin to replace the rebab, drum kit to replace the kendang drum, etc…

Southeast Asian/Gamelan Music

Indian, Persian and Southeast Asian music has a cyclic rhythmic concept and so the circular representation of it is the most appropriate. This is also the way they view time with reincarnation and past-lives etc. so the circular representation is a natural.

If we look at the rhythmic cycle in gamelan music on a circular grid, it often has two superimposed triangles representing 6 rhyhmic events divided into two kinds played in duple meter. They do not create polyrhythmic tuplets so are not symmetrical triangles. But the way the two overlap produces a symmetrical star of David/Jewish star, though usually the downbeat is not on the axis of symmetry.

Microtones:

Indonesian Gamelan has an octave divided into ten equal parts for the Slendro scale. Ten being a number of completion in Chinese theory which was carried to South-East Asia. Thai music is divided into seven equal parts where two are left out, usually the 4th and 6th so that there isn't just a scale of all equal intervals like the whole tone. This creates a pentatonic scale (5 notes). The notes that are left out are sometimes used as ornaments and passing tones. Burma leaves those degrees out too and also makes another scale in seven equal but leaves out the third and seventh instead.

Healing Music, Gamelan and Microtones:

The binaural beats of gamelan, created by the 2 identical instrument sets which are tuned about a 1/4 step apart, synchronizes with alpha or theta brainwave patterns depending on the exact distance of the interval. Gamelan musicians even say that their intent is to make the audience half-awake/half-asleep. I thought a 12-string type guitar retuned could also reproduce the shimmering quality of gamelan. The scraper used in Cuban music can also scrape out brain wave tuplets in 7, 9, 11, 13 or whatever.

My Bio IV

I have written more music than I can count, as well as published articles on music composition, aesthetics and ethnomusicology (http://www.paradisemoon.com/thai_main/Huahin/thai_instruments_intro.htm). My music combines melodic motives from jazz, rhythmic motives from the Middle East, India, Africa, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bali,

World Music Project with Robert Plant's guitarist wants me to play on their next world music CD

Some people making a world music project that has Led Zeppelin's singer's guitarist wants me to play on their next world music CD but it's not possible without a computer. My computer got a short and a small fire and is still in Ubud. The reason they want me to do it is because my music on Myspace sounds great and other examples like this.



It's composed to sound like Japanese folk music. I've got other examples in Thai, Chinese, Indonesian and Middle Eastern Styles.

I sent a message to Mark Slaughter asking him to endorse my music composition course. In the message to Mark it mentioned the opportunity with Robert Plant's guitarist emphasizing why they would want me and it also said,

"I was wondering if you'd be interested in having a look at the music composition course I'm currently marketing. It has the tools I used to put together all of my compositions. It's at www.thewritesongcourse.com. I could really use someone with your credentials to give their endorsement.

Free copies are below.
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/the-write-song-course-ebook/6607644

http://www.lulu.com/content/multimedia/the-write-song-course-audio/6633066

Just listen to the audio while you passively scan the text. What could be easier?

I think we could both make a decent amount of money."

Best regards,

Greg Turner