a slendro gamelan

I have recently ordered a small slendro gamelan from Suhirdjan in
Jogyakarta. Going against the grain somewhat, I have had it tempered to ascale where the interval 1 - 3 is exactly between 81/64 and 4/3, and the
fifths in the sequence 1 - 5 - 2 - 6 - 3 are each 713.25 cents. The
octaves, however, are _pleng_ (in tune). I had played around with severalJust intonations, but each of them favored one pathet over the others, and
split keys seemed to create unmanageable technical problems when playing
traditional repertoire. An interesting thing about the temperament I
settled on is that a set of pythagorean assumptions tempered in this way
leads to better representations of septimal intervals, which most of the
just gamelan in the US feature. The choices of _pleng_ octaves and 1-3 asmy "wolf" may well be points of discussion, but the tuning (as used on mygender) has aroused no particular comments from experienced players.

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sat, 31 May 1997 02:51 +0200
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA05382; Sat, 31 May 1997 02:51:09 +0200
Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 02:51:09 +0200
Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA05371
Received: (qmail 27702 invoked from network); 31 May 1997 00:50:57 -0000
Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1)
by localhost with SMTP; 31 May 1997 00:50:57 -0000
Message-Id: <970530204711_-1162894512@emout09.mail.aol.com>
Errors-To: madole@mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu