FREE A GAMELAN MANUAL: A PLAYERS GUIDE TO THE CENTRAL JAVANESE GAMELAN PDF

Richard Pickvance | 336 pages | 30 Mar 2006 | Jaman Mas Books | 9780955029509 | English | London, United Kingdom - Wikipedia

The music of Indonesia is regarded as relatively obscure to the Western listener, distant in geography but also in musical and cultural aesthetics. Despite this, gamelanwhich refers to various types of Indonesian orchestra and the different traditions and genres that such orchestras perform, has become increasingly prevalent in World Music circuits. While incomprehension sometimes relegates its overwhelming complexities and intricacies to Orientalist exoticism, gamelan offers a rare projection of Indonesian culture that has been revered and respected far beyond the edges of the archipelago. Situated in the Indian and Pacific oceans, the archipelago of Indonesia is the largest country in Southeast Asia and the most extensive island complex in the world, comprising more than 15, islands that are home to more than million people. Indonesia is a very diverse society, having provided a passageway for peoples and cultures between Oceania and mainland Asia for millennia. Ancient Indonesia was characterised by small estuary kingdoms. As no single hegemonic power emerged, the early history of Indonesia is the development of distinct regions that only gradually threaded together. Sailors from the archipelago became pioneering maritime explorers and merchants, establishing trade routes with places as far off as southern China and the east coast of Africa even in ancient times. Hinduism, brought to Indonesia by Brahmans from India c. However, as the Srivijaya kingdom on Sumatra expanded its maritime influence and made firm commercial links with China and India, it also spread Buddhism into parts of Indonesia 7 th th Cpromoting a social structure in which leaders bore the responsibility of ensuring that all had the means of ascetic worship through religious A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan and community rituals. Islam, mainly in the form of its mystical Sufi sect, started to spread to Indonesia along trade lines with India and the Middle East 13 th C. Eventually a number of predominantly Muslim mercantile kingdoms emerged 15 th th Cwith some like Aceh declaring themselves as explicitly Muslim states. In most areas, A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan and Muslim kingdoms coexisted in harmony, finding affinities between the guru and the wali and their desire for divine communion, but in some, as in Java, there was open warfare between kingdoms who fought for the supremacy of their own culture and religion. With the expansion of European imperialism, Portuguese traders and subsequently the forces of the Dutch and English East India Companies took control of the Indonesian trade routes 16 th th C. Despite rebel struggles and religious resistance, the Dutch seized Java and the inner islands as a colony 19 th C and imposed capitalist production systems, which decreased mercantile trade in favour of increased agricultural and industrial exports. This brought severe hardship for the Javanese workers themselves, leading to civil unrest and even conflicts like the Padri and Java Wars. Subsequently, the Dutch expanded their territories, annexing the whole of modern-day Indonesia late 19 th A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan 20 th Cand an influx of Dutch settlers created a sharp divide between the modern cities that they made their home and the traditional villages that protected indigenous civilisation and culture. However, by the late s, a unified independence movement arose, focusing on anticolonial resistance rather than sectarian political or religious identities. This culminated in the A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan of the Indonesian Nationalist Partyand its leader Sukarno pledged to create one Indonesian motherland for one Indonesian people, founding a common language and initiating the struggle for the united nation. After the chaos of conflict between the Japanese and Allied forces on the island, brutal Dutch police action against the Indonesian people and successive leftist revolts, the Netherlands, under pressure from the United Nations, transferred sovereignty to a federal and democratic United States of Indonesia His regime reinforced national unity through cultural spectacles, grand monuments, patriotic slogans and the Pancasila Five Principles of monotheism, nationalism, humanitarianism, democracy and social justice, but increasingly positioned Indonesia against the West, culminating in its withdrawal from the UN After economic crisis hit Southeast Asiadeep political turmoil caused Suharto to resign and subsequent elections put four different presidents in power who strengthened freedoms and democracy in Indonesia but also faced rising separatism, with East Timor achieving independenceand violent ethnic and religious militancy. However, over the next decade, a series of severe earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions, while devastating the country and its people, A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan much of the unrest and united the nation, enabling President Yudhoyono to instigate political and economic reform and, since then, Indonesia has experienced a more prosperous and peaceful period. With its immense scope in terms of peoples and languages, it is perhaps unsurprising that Indonesia is deeply culturally and musically diverse. As such, few generalisations can be made A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan the whole country and, thus, the preferred way to approach, and to start to appreciate, these vast music traditions is to examine them selectively by focusing in on a certain traditional form, albeit with recognition of how this fits into regional cultural trends principally, Bali, Central Java, East Java, West Java, Lombok, Sumatra and Outer Islands and historical strata Indigenous, Hindu, Islamic, European and post-European. In line with this approach, this article will focus mainly on the tradition of gamelan. Regionally, gamelan style is highly diverse and gamelan orchestras themselves differ in size, tunings, timbres, instruments and combinations to the extent each gamelan constitutes a unique set. As a result, instruments are never swapped between ensembles and different ensembles can sound markedly different from one another. However, despite this, all gamelan comprise three core instrumental groups: melodic tuned percussion metallophones and smaller kettle-gongs struck with malletsstructural tuned percussion larger kettle-gongs and hanging gongs struck with mallets and rhythmic untuned percussion membranophones struck with hands or sticksthough they often also include other melodic instruments. Instruments are decorated with ornate carvings, usually of local and regional symbols e. Solonese gamelan often feature A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan naga a folkloric mystical snake creature derived from Indian mythology. Gamelan is an oral tradition where its compositions are created for the community and where such compositions and musical techniques are transmitted orally, learned and internalised aurally and performed from memory. Despite the diversity of styles across the islands, gamelan encompasses a unitary system of musical aesthetics with common structural principles for composition and performance. These complex aesthetics principles with terms as they appear in Central Javanese tradition include slendro and pelong tuning, pathet modality, balungang melody, colotomic structureand irama texture. Importantly, these schematics only serve as rough guides, and each ensemble actually forges their own unique tuning. Additionally, if a gamelan is to play compositions in both slendro and pelongit requires two sets of the same instruments one set tuned for slendro and the other for pelong. There are six core pathetthree for slendro and three for pelong. These gendhing each contain a balungang a short fundamental melody. The balungang not only provides the basic melody of a performance of the composition but also sets the gatra metrewhich is dictated by length of the gongan one full cycle of the fundamental melody. Finally, performances of a gendhing often bring in additional instruments, which all function in various ways as elaboration: the sulingwith its loud and piercing timbre, tends to heterogeneously sound out the balungan ; the gambang and the siter improvise fast staccato patterns based on the balungan ; the rebab plays highly e xpressive and ornamented improvised motifs as a counterpoint to the balungan ; and the gerong ,drawing on folk stories or poetry, mainly sing precomposed countermelodies over the texture of the gamelan while the sindenin a similar way to the rebabengages in an elaboration role by improvising free melismatic vocalisations and high lyricisms that glide over the pulsations of the gamelan. The core social functions and purposes of gamelan have varied across different contexts, times and places. These ensembles consisted of various sizes, tunings and timbres of angklungaccompanied by bamboo flutes like the sulingwooden xylophones like the gambang and double-headed drums like the A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan and percussion e. The ensembles were associated closely with religiosity, and were considered capable of communicating with the ancestral spirits, and they performed devotional, ceremonial and multifaceted artistic roles in religious temples, royal courts and community performances that would be adopted by gamelan. By the 12 th C, gamelan had been developed in forms and functions that resemble the contemporary tradition in Central Java, and spread across the Javanese Kingdom and even to its main trading partners on Bali and Kalimantan. As such, incense is habitually burned as an act of consecration before gamelan performances and it is still considered highly disrespected and unlucky to walk over, rather than around, the instruments. It is worth pointing out that, despite the Hinduization of the arts 5 th th C during this period e. Yet, this process of Hinduization did have a notable indirect impact on gamelan tradition in the sense that it cultivated new approaches to performance and A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan forms of associated song, dance and theatre. Narrative folk songs involved storytelling of local indigenous folk tales through stylised characterisations e. Lyric songs offered expressions of poetic verse and also as guidance, lament, social censure and so on but usually assimilated into the gamelan style in the sense that the singing acted as an elaboration in the irama texture. In certain specialised gamelan song genres e. In East Java and Bali, these pethilan dance tales draw on local martial arts traditions for stylised dances that embody mythic warriors and perform folk tales of their great deeds. The narrative of the stories is accompanied and directed by the musicof the gamelan e. The tradition of the singer-dancer, influenced by the Indian courtesan tradition, involved women but also men dressed in female attire performed erotic songs and dances to the pulsations of the gamelan ; men would pay for the pleasure of dancing with singer-dancer while women and children ridicule them. However, the core of the theatre tradition is wayang kulit shadow puppet theatrewhich was developed underMajapahit rulebased on Indian theatrical forms. The wayang kulit are based on Hindu epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayanaand are performed by a dhalang master puppeteerwho voices the narrate and the dialogue, operates the motions and gestures of the puppet characters against a shadow screen, directs the gamelan musicians using a metal beater held by one foot that is struck against the puppet box and strikes two metal plates held by the other foot at key moments to add dramatic impulse to the story. Performances were usually A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan at night and traditionally lasted for up to nine hours, requiring immense skills of stamina and concentration from the dhalang. As such, the pre-Hindu and Majapahit periods established the main musical styles, cultural purposes and social functions of gamelanmost of which are maintained today. Islam had some impact on the gamelan tradition, though it did not make significant impressions. Specific ceremonial gamelan traditions were developed for particular Muslim festivals, such as the devotional artform for the holy week in the Javanese month of Mulud the Islamic month of Rabi I for which the ceremonial gamelan sekati were hauled out of the courts and into the mosque to perform a specific set of sacred repertoire throughout the days and nights as an act of religious commitment. European rule also made only modest impressions on gamelan tradition. It was during the colonial period that Javanese gamelan first achieved international fame, particularly after an appearance at the Paris Exposition Universellewhich inspired imitations by several Western classical music composers, most notably Claude Debussy. The weakening of the royal courts, especially in Bali, promoted social changes that, somewhat ironically, democratised the tradition under colonial rule. The rise of nationalism coincided with the rise of the recording industry and radio broadcasting, which disseminated local musics, including a huge variety of gamelan tradition, across the islands. Gamelanalongside indigenous folk and popular music forms like dangdut the songs of the urban poor which combined indigenous vocality and texts with Indian and Malaysian filmi stylesthus became a potent political symbol of indigeneity and cultural sovereignty in the struggle for independence. Heimarck, Brita, Balinese discourses on music and modernization : village voices and urban views London: Routledge, Warman, Asvi et al. Yampolsky, Philip et al. Header Image: Flickr. Sculpture of King Kertanagara: Britannica. President Sukarno: Britannica. Gong ageng: National Music Museum. Kenong: National Music Museum. Siter: National Music Museum. Rebab musician: National Music Museum. Kendhang Drummer: National Music Museum. Angklung Instruments: National Music Museum. Angklung Performance: Smithsonian. Javanese Pethilan: National Music Museum. Wayang Kulit shadow puppet theatre: Asia Society. Save Save. The Music of Indonesia. Country Profile Situated in the Indian and Pacific oceans, the archipelago of Indonesia is the largest country in Southeast Asia and the most extensive island complex in the world, comprising more than 15, islands that are home to more than million people. Cultural History Ancient Indonesia was characterised by small estuary kingdoms. Music Culture Islands Traditions With its immense scope in terms of A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan and languages, it is perhaps unsurprising that Indonesia is deeply culturally and musically diverse. Schaareman, Danker ed. View all People and Places. Gamelan - Wikipedia

No eBook available Amazon. Account Options Sign in. My library Help Advanced Book Search. Get print book. Shop for Books on Google Play Browse the world's largest eBookstore and start reading today on the web, tablet, phone, or ereader. Richard Pickvance. Jaman Mas Books- Music - pages. This manual offers the first comprehensive description of the performance practice of the central Javanese gamelan. Aimed mainly at the many gamelan players in the West, it will also appeal to composers and music lovers wanting an extended account of one of the world's major musical cultures, and to teachers interested in new resources for MUSIC in schools. The book provides detailed information on the parts played by the various instruments of the gamelan, as well as on the principles on which the music is based. It also sketches the cultural background to musical performance in Java. Numerous illustrations and helpful tips for beginners are included, but also pointers to where more advanced students can find additional material. Owners of the book have access to further content via the associated website. A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan inside the book. Contents Introduction. Gamelan at home. He spends as much time as possible playing and studying the gamelan. He resides in London, UK. Bibliographic information. Musical Instruments. Gamelan - Wikipedia

The most common instruments used are metallophones played by mallets and a set of hand-played drums called kendhang which register the beat. The kemanak a banana shaped idiophone and gangsa another metallophone are commonly used gamelan instruments in Java. Other instruments include xylophonesbamboo flutesa bowed instrument called a rebaband even vocalists named sindhen. Although the popularity of gamelan has declined since the introduction of pop music, gamelan is still commonly played on formal occasions and in many traditional Indonesian ceremonies. For most Indonesians, gamelan is an integral part of Indonesian culture. The gamelan predates the Hindu- Buddhist culture that dominated Indonesia in its earliest records and thus represents an indigenous art form. In contrast to the heavy Indian influence in other art forms, the only obvious Indian influence in gamelan music is in the Javanese style of singing, and in the themes of the Wayang kulit shadow puppet plays. He needed a signal to summon the gods and thus invented the gong. For more complex messages, he invented two other gongs, thus forming the original gamelan set. The earliest image of a musical ensemble is found on the bas-relief of the 8th century Buddhist monument of BorobudurCentral Java. Some of these musical instruments are indeed included in a complete gamelan orchestra. Musical instruments such as the bamboo flute, bells, drums in various sizes, lute, and bowed and plucked string instruments were identified in this image. However it lacks metallophones and xylophones. Nevertheless, the image of this musical ensemble is suggested to be the ancient form of the gamelan. The instruments developed into their current form during the Majapahit Empire. The arts office oversaw the construction of musical instruments, as well as scheduling performances at the court. In the palaces of Java the oldest known ensembles, Gamelan Munggang and Gamelan Kodok Ngorekare apparently from the 12th century. These formed the basis of a "loud style" of music. In contrast, a "soft style" developed out of the kemanak tradition and is related to the traditions of singing Javanese poetryin a manner often believed to be similar to the chorus that accompanies the modern bedhaya dance. In the 17th century, these loud and soft styles mixed, and to a large extent the variety of modern gamelan styles of Bali, Java, and Sunda resulted from different ways of mixing these elements. Thus, despite the seeming diversity of styles, many of the same theoretical concepts, instruments, and techniques are shared between the styles. A gamelan is a multi-timbre ensemble consisting of metallophones, xylophones, flutes, gongs, voices, as well as bowed and plucked strings. The hand-played drum called kendhang controls the tempo and rhythm of pieces as well as transitions from one section to another, while one instrument gives melodic cues to indicate treatment or sections of a piece. Some of the instruments that make up a gamelan in present-day Central Java are shown below: [11] [12]. Varieties of gamelan are distinguished by their collection of instruments and use of voice, tunings, repertoire, style, and cultural context. In general, no two gamelan ensembles are the same, and those that arose in prestigious courts are often considered to have their own style and tuning. Certain styles may also be shared by nearby ensembles, leading to a regional style. The varieties are generally grouped geographically, with the principal division between the styles favored by the BalineseJavaneseand Sundanese peoples. The Madurese also had their own style of gamelan, although it is no longer in use, and A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan last orchestra is kept at the Sumenep palace. Balinese gamelan is often associated with the virtuosity and rapid changes of tempo and dynamics of Gamelan gong kebyarits best-known style. Other popular Balinese styles include Kecaka theatrical dance and music form also known as the "monkey chant. Javanese gamelan can be made from iron or brass; instruments made of cast bronze are considered the best quality. Outside the main core on Java and Baligamelan has spread through migration and cultural interest, new styles sometimes resulting as well. Javanese emigrants to Suriname play gamelan in a style close to that found in Central Javanese villages. Gamelan is also related to the Filipino kulintang ensemble. The variety of gamelan can befound in over 25 countries outside Indonesia, presenting both traditional and experimental repertoire. In oral Javanese culture distinctions are made between complete or incomplete, archaic and modern, and large standard and small village gamelan. The various archaic ensembles are distinguished by their unique combinations of instruments and possession of obsolete instruments such as the bell- tree byong in the 3-toned gamelan kodhok ngorek. Regionally variable village gamelan are often distinguished from standard gamelan which have the rebab as the main melodic instrument by their inclusion of a double-reed wind selompretslompretor sompret in addition to variable drum and gong components, with some also including the shaken bamboo angklung. Javanese gamelan being played in Keraton Yogyakarta. Javanese gamelan being played in SurakartaCentral Java. Balinese women gamelan Gong Kebyar. Balinese gamelan being played in Kuta. Sundanese Gamelan Degung. In Indonesia, gamelan often accompanies dance, wayang puppet performances, or rituals and ceremonies. Typically players in the gamelan will be familiar with dance moves and poetry, while dancers are able to play in the ensemble. Gamelan's role in rituals is so important that there is a Javanese saying, "It A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan not official until the gong is hung". Certain gamelans are associated with specific rituals, such as the Gamelan Sekatenwhich is used in celebration of Mawlid an-Nabi Muhammad 's birthday. In Balialmost all religious rituals include gamelan performance. Gamelan is also used in the ceremonies of A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan Catholic church in Indonesia. When an "ending" piece such as " Udan Mas " is begun, the audience will know that the event is nearly finished and will begin to leave. Certain pieces are also believed to possess magic powers, and can be used to ward off evil spirits. Gamelan is frequently played on the radio. For example, the Pura Pakualaman gamelan performs live on the radio every Minggu Pon a day in the day cycle of the A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan calendar. In the court tradition of central Javagamelan is often played in the pendopoan open pavilion with a cavernous, double-pitched roof, no side walls, and a hard marble or tile floor. The instruments are placed on a platform to one side, which allows the sound to reverberate in the roof space and enhances the acoustics. Gambelan the Balinese term are owned by a banjarnobility or temples and kept in their respective compounds. In case of banjar ownership the instruments are all kept there together because people believe that all the A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan belong to the community as a whole and that no one person has ownership over an instrument. Not only is this where the instruments are stored, but this is also the practice space for the sekaha Gamelan orchestra group. The open walls allow for the music to flow out into the community where the rest of the people may enjoy it. Balinese gamelan cannot be heard inside closed rooms, because it easily crosses the threshold of pain. The sekaha A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan led by a single instructor whose job it is in the community to lead this group and to come up with new pieces. When they are working on a new piece, the instructor will lead the group in practice and help the group form the new music as they are practicing. When the instructor creates a new song, he leaves enough open for interpretation that the group can improvise, so the group will write the music as they practice it. There are many styles in Balinese gamelan. Kebyar is one of the most recent ones. Some Balinese gamelan groups constantly change their music by taking older pieces they know and mixing them together, as well as trying new variations of the music. Their music constantly changes because they believe that music should grow and change; the only exception to this is with their most sacred songs which they do not change. A single A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan piece of music can take several months before it is completed. Men and women usually perform in separate groups, with the exception in Java of the pesindhenthe female singer who performs with male groups. In the twenty-five countries outside Indonesia that have gamelan, music performed in a concert context or as part of ceremonies for expat communities [21] may also accompany dance or wayang. The tuning and construction of a gamelan orchestra is a complex process. There are other tuning systems such as degung exclusive to Sunda, or West Java, similar with Japanese ryukyuan scaleand madenda similar to a Japanese hirajoshi scale. A full gamelan A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan include a set A Gamelan Manual: A Players Guide to the Central Javanese Gamelan instruments in each tuning, and classically only one tuning is used at a time. The precise tuning used differs from ensemble to ensemble, and gives each ensemble its own particular flavour. A set of gamelan instruments will be tuned to the same set of notes, but the tuning will vary from one gamelan to the next, including variations in the size of intervals. Colin McPheea Canadian composer who spent much time in Bali, remarked, "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. One such ensemble is gamelan Manikasantiwhich can play the repertoire of many different ensembles. Balinese gamelan instruments are built in pairs that are tuned slightly apart to produce interference beatsideally at a consistent speed for all pairs of notes in all registers. This concept is referred to as "ombak," translating to "wave," communicating the idea of cyclical undulation. One instrument, tuned slightly higher, is thought of as the "inhale," and the other, slightly lower, is called the "exhale. It is thought that this contributes to the "shimmering" sound of Balinese 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. The scale roughly approximates that of the phrygian mode of the Western major scale E-E on the white keys of the pianowith the notes EFGBC corresponding to the note positions in the slendro scale used by most gamelan. In addition to non-western scales, Javanese gamelan uses a combination of tempo and density known as Iramarelating how many beats on the saron panerus instrument there are to notes in the core melody or balungan ; density is considered primary. Gamelan music is traditionally not notated and began as an oral tradition. In the 19th century, however, the kraton palaces of Yogyakarta and Surakarta developed distinct notations for transcribing the repertoire. These were not used to read the music, which was memorized, but to preserve pieces in the court records. The Yogyanese notation is a checkerboard notation, which uses six or seven vertical lines to represent notes of higher pitch in the balungan melodic frameworkand horizontal lines which represent the series of beats, read downward with time. The fourth vertical line and every fourth horizontal line completing a gatra are darkened for legibility. Symbols on the left indicate the colotomic or metric structure of gongs and so forth, while specific drum features are notated in symbols to the right. The Solonese notation reads horizontally, like Western notation, but does not use barlines. Instead, note values and rests are squiggled between the notes. Today this notation is relatively rare, and has been replaced by kepatihan notationwhich is a cipher system. Kepatihan notation developed around at the kepatihan Palace in Surakarta, which had become a high-school conservatory. Like the palace notation, however, Kepatihan records mostly the balungan part and its metric phrases as marked by a variety of gongs. The other parts are created in real time, and depend on the knowledge each musician has of his instrument, and his awareness of what others are playing; this "realization" is sometimes called "garap. Some ethnomusicologists, trained in European music, may make transcriptions onto a Western staff. This entails particular challenges of tuning and time, sometimes resulting in unusual clefs.