Re: Jeff's Fireflies mp2

Hi Jeff,

I've got your fireflies mp2 on a loop right now. Lovely piece.

I really like those slowly evolving repeating figures.

I hope you can find a way to make it available again.

Didn't notice it first time round, but after a few
loops, has a definite gamelan feel to it. I remember
you said you played in a gamelan, and I never replied
to that.

We used to rotate round the instruments - I can't
remember the names, but the beginners played the
off beat instrument whatever it is called, the
xylophone like instruments that play the main tune,
and the Gongs (where one had to be sure to keep ones
count, especially with the big gong for the end of
a section!)

We also had a try with the fast ones that anticipate
the next note in a special pattern.

Only the basic instruments when I was there, no singing
or flutes or strings, except in the summer school, where
we had a lot of fun - I had a go at the rebabs then.

Complete gamelan should have acting / shadow puppets as
well I believe.

I haven't kept it up as one needs the commitment to keep
going to play every week. I did exactly that for a fair
while.

Robert

> I really like those slowly evolving repeating figures.

> Didn't notice it first time round, but after a few
> loops, has a definite gamelan feel to it.

Thanks! I did not say anything about it, but I did
grab a subset of 13 that I picked by ear to be
an indonesian mode.

Even before my experience with gamelan (in really old
compositions) my music oddly had definate indonesian
influences.

After my experience with gamelan, it was really something
for me to listen to old tapes of music of mine where no
one would believe I had never heard gamelan music at
that point.

Though in this piece, with the idea of an ancient court,
and with the Babylonians being perfectly able to make
bronze and iron instruments, I felt that somehow going
for a gamelan mood in the middle east was appropriate.

Of course the Indonesian gamelan has changed very little
in 2000 years and perhaps 3000 years even so it is not
at all unreasonable to think there could have been
an influence in EITHER direction, particularly with
the Arabs being the first to run the spice route and
apparently having been doing so for a long time.

- Jeff

Jeff!
This is not really the case. It is perhaps only 3 or 4 hundred years
ago that we find instruments that resembles the ones we see today. There
is much controversy as to which what came first Pelog or Slendro as it
appears they were not both present that far back. The music itself is
always changing too. The recordings made by McPhee represent music that
is no longer in existence except as a basis for new styles. With the
introduction of the Rebab, we see the Persian influence, but not all
Indonesia is Islamic. Bali is Hindu and by the way, credit their tuning
as being brought by a Princess of China. Of course, China is on the
silk road and they in turn had dealing with the mid east :)
Last week i played on my radio show a performer from Yemen who used a
copper tray instrument which is played as a fingered percussion
instrument. The liner notes remarked that the alloy was the same as the
gongs found in Indonesia. hmmmm..

"X. J. Scott" wrote:

> Of course the Indonesian gamelan has changed very little
> in 2000 years and perhaps 3000 years even so it is not
> at all unreasonable to think there could have been
> an influence in EITHER direction, particularly with
> the Arabs being the first to run the spice route and
> apparently having been doing so for a long time.

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
http://www.anaphoria.com

The Wandering Medicine Show
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