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...

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

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…

Music's Relationship to Dance

African dance has often been viewed as obscene or liscentious because it usually involves hip motions which are interpreted as being overtly sexual. The music is usually designed for an actual purpose such as drinking and/or socializing unlike the modern "fine" arts which sees itself as beyond everything. Art for arts sake et al. In Africa onlookers usually participate in either the dance and/or the music and are encouraged to do so. The dance is seen as a lifestyle integral to everything African. To call it obscene is ignorant or purposefuly rude/racist.

The Greeks also based their music on the steps of dance. You may remember the terms from poetry class such as iambic pentameter etc… These describe the rhythms of dance steps. Different rhythms were thought to recreate different moods by the rhythms produced. This is similar to the melodic concept in India and Southeast Asia known as “rasa.” Classical motifs were also thought to possess this power to induce a feeling state. Each raga and rhythmic cycle is thought to have its own emotional flavor.

Southeast Asian Melody

Southeast Asia's melodic development is very similar to the Indian. But it gives a straight melody with an ornamented version and variations such as a rhythmically altered version all presented simultaneously. Voice crossing is integral to gamelan music. It’s used to maintain interest.

Sometimes the melody is played at different tempos simultaneously. Western melody is very goal oriented. Gamelan melody is not like this and is supposed to create a timeless feeling which it does quite effectively. Like the classical music of India and Korea, the introduction usually has a part where there is no rhythmic beat. The Kebyar form has a melody in unison during the intro with no beat or it occasionally plays interlocking rhythms alternated with melody played by different groupings of the instruments. It plays interlocking variations in subsequent sections. It also has a grand finale beginning slow and ending fast just like Indian and Korean music.

Before moving from the intro to the first section, the rhythm can completely break down while the musicians play fast but soft and making sure their part does NOT match rhythmically with anyone else’s as a transition. In the first section it has interlocking rhythms which is also found in the music of Africa, Cuba and Haiti though not as much in a melodic form but only in a rhythmic one.

Gamelan music is based on a cantus firmus similar to the occidental sacred music that was based on the ancient melodies of Gregorian chant. The scale is based on ten equal divisions and their first scale was slendro which is about equal to C,D,F,G and A. It’s a pentatonic scale. This scale is used in temple services which are a combination of Budhism, Hinduism in Bali and Buddhism and Islam in Java. It is considered more dignified and less passionate than the pelog scale which sounds angry or sad to the South East Asians.

Pelog was created after the Dutch invasion. The native people fought bravely for a long time but were cornered and about to be captured at which point the people who were still alive, of which there were a large number, committed mass suicide. The music created using Pelog is supposed to sound like the thunder of war and the clash of armies. It became popular very quickly and the forms that use it such as Kebyar, were never elitist music played in the courts of the king. It is a very recent development.

Pelog has three forms known as patet. The first is roughly equal to C, Db, Eb, G and Ab a kind of Phrygian pentatonic scale. Anything played in pelog immediately sounds exotic to westerners because of the flat second degree and the strange skipping of F and B(b). One instrument in the ensemble plays neighbor notes around the cantus in a tenor voice where the cantus note is the middle of three notes. There are several different kinds of interlock! ing rhythms in gamelan music. The first is just a repeated note. The second is in the range of a fifth and where the two rhythms coincide, they meet on the fifth. The lower voice of the interlocking rhythm is comosed after the cantus. The upper voice is composed after that.

The music has breaks and fill to add variety and to mark sections. Gamelan music has a colotomic structure where the largest gong marks the beginning and ending of large sections. Usually only the most experienced musicians play it, since its placement is so important. It plays every 32 or 64 beats, for example depending on the structure. Gongs for the colotomic structure are often gloriously out of tune with the rest of the ensemble. There are higher gongs which divide the structure further.

One set of gongs plays on the last beat of every measure. This is similar to Korean music which places the accent in the same place and very different from western musical practice which usually places the accent on the first beat of every measure. The rhythms usually coincide on the last beat of a measure and meet on the fifth as I said before. When the music gets fast the players divide the music between them in hockett so that each person takes a turn playing each note of the interlocking rhythm. This technique is applied to all instrumental ensembles even one made up only of flutes. The higher pitched and fastest instruments are played by the youngest members of the ensemble.

Playing in a gamelan orchestra is considered a community service. Songs are often named after the doings of animals. The cantus has definite methods for targeting destination notes. Just like classical and jazz. The most senior musician plays the drums and/or rebab, a bowed string instrument. Flutes play in unison with the rebab.

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....

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.