Gamelan

Gamelan in two words and thirty hands

The word Gamelan originally refers to sets of percussion instruments struck with a hammer, including gongs and blade keyboards. Unlike the autonomous instruments gathered in Western orchestras, those that make up the Gamelan are not designed to be used in isolation.

In fact, it is the whole ensemble, the Gamelan itself, which is a kind of collective instrument. The musicians are interchangeable and each one finds his place, according to the evolution of his skills and the necessities of the compositions.
It is by studying the place of each instrument in the Gamelan that we understand its architecture. Here are the families of instruments that will be found most frequently :

Colotomic or metric instruments
The Gongs (according to their order of magnitude)
the gong Ageng, the most important is the Gong Wadon (mother, in the sense of matrix).
It contains all the harmonics of this Gamelan ;
the Gong Lanang (father, contained in the mother Gong) ;
gong Kempur (sometimes called Kempul) – pronounced keumpour  ;
the Kempli gongs, pronounced keumpli, (the latter generally plays a sustenuto, on which all the musicians guide themselves to keep time), Kemong and Tawa Tawa .

The instruments for the basic melody : the metallophones
the Jegogan called Jegog (pronounced djegog), 5-blade metallophones that play the role of the bass ;
the Calungs (pronounced Tchaloung), it is a 5 blade metallophone, an octave above the Jegog ;
The Penyacah (pronounce peignatcha) which have 7 blades and have the same role as the Calung ;
The Ugal (pronounced ougal), made of 10 blades (2 octaves), unique instrument to which we entrust the melody ;
The Pemade, built like the Ugal but which sound an octave above it and which also play the melody.
The Térompong, 10 gong chime, which also plays the melody.

Instruments for elaborate melody (embroidery) : Gong chimes and small metallophones :
The Reong : made of 12 small bulbous gongs placed next to each other in
according to their size on a wooden frame. Played by 4 musicians, it is the most difficult instrument because it requires perfect timing ;
The Kantilans (pronounced kantilanne) : associated in pairs, they have 10 bars (2 octaves). They share the embroidery according to rhythmic patterns called kotekan (pronounced kotékanne).

The rhythmic instruments : the drums. It is by their call that the musicians know which piece they are going to play and at what tempo (speed).
The Kendang (pronounced kèndang) sangse  (female) and Kendang polos (male): double-skinned drum.
It is a wooden cylinder where at each end is stretched a skin. It is played at
hand and/or with a stick ;
La Ceng ceng (pronounced tchèng tchèng), cymbal set in the shape of a dragon turtle ;
The Tepyak (pronounced tepiak), pair of large cymbals held in the hand.

Not only are all the instruments of the same Gamelan made together by a specialist (the Pandé), but their tuning is definitive and specific to each orchestra. It is therefore impossible to build a Gamelan from instruments of various origins or to mix the components of two Gamelans.

Most of the instruments that hold the basic melody and the embroidery are arranged in tuned pairs with a few commas apart which, thus breaking up the harmonics, create beats which amplify the vibrations and therefore the breadth of the sonorities. One is tuned slightly higher (ngisep tuning) than the other (ngumbang tuning).
These instruments are struck with one hand by mallets or hammers (panggul pronounce pangoul)) while the other hand stifles with the thumb and index finger the resonances of the blade previously struck (indeed, the vibrations of each blade must be stopped before hitting the next blade to avoid “ bouillie sonore“ and “musical illegibility“).