query Gamelan and Jalatharangam

Bill,

During the first concert at MicroFest, between one of your
pieces and the next, you made some changes to a few keys of
the gamelan instrument that you were playing. From where I
sat it looked like you removed something hanging on a string
inside the instrument. I meant to ask later what you were
doing and whether it was the standard practice, etc. I
particularly liked the piece with the tuned water bowls. I
loved the timbres. It reminded me of Jalatharangam (the
south Indian art of tuned percussion). Are any of your
gamelan pieces played at MicroFest also available on CD ?
I'd like to hear them again having arrived at this concert
just when my body clock told me I should be going to bed.

Greg S

>During the first concert at MicroFest, between one of your
>pieces and the next, you made some changes to a few keys of
>the gamelan instrument that you were playing. From where I
>sat it looked like you removed something hanging on a string
>inside the instrument. I meant to ask later what you were
>doing and whether it was the standard practice, etc.

Hi, Greg,

I'm glad you found your trip worthwhile and I hope you're having a
well-deserved rest as well. The gamelan instrument I play in those pieces
you saw -- Slendro Suite and Pelog Partita -- are called gender (pronounced
with a hard "g"), specifically gender barung, a thin-key metallophone with
individual tube resonators. Gender are pentatonic instruments, even though
pelog is a heptatonic system. This means that, in a full gamelan, there are
two pelog gender, one for each of the two common 5-tone subsets of pelog's
7 tones. However, they differ by just one pitch, which means that it is a
rather expensive redundancy.

As a result, some instrument makers offer the possibility of "sorogan" or
interchangeable keys. Unlike the other keys, which are suspended from
cords, the sorogan are mounted on styrofoam and held in place with
nail-like posts. While they do not ring as long as the suspended keys, they
can then be easily removed and replaced with other pitches. However, this
means that the resonant frequency of the resonating tube has to change. In
order to do that, I lower a block of wood attached to a string into the
tube. The size of the block is determined precisely so that it changes the
frequency by the desired amount.

While not that "traditional," sorogan are certainly not unknown in
conventional gamelan. However, after I saw the possibilities, I asked
Suhirdjan, my instrument maker, not only to allow me to replace pitch 1
with 7 (which is the traditional swap), but also 4 with 5 (which would
never be done in a traditional gamelan). This gives me the possibility of 4
different pentatonics, and I used 3 of them in Pelog Partita -- hence what
Mark Nowitzsky characterized as a "pit stop" between most movements.

I wrote an article outlining some of this for 1/1. You can find it at
http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/pleng.html. Suhirdjan has a web page at
http://www.gamelan.org/AGI/Suhirdjan.html.

>I particularly liked the piece with the tuned water bowls. I
>loved the timbres. It reminded me of Jalatharangam (the
>south Indian art of tuned percussion).

Yes, I was thinking of this when I decided to use the bowls, but also a
piece of Henry Cowell's -- I think it's his Set of Five that uses them.

Bill

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^ Bill Alves email: alves@hmc.edu ^
^ Harvey Mudd College URL: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/ ^
^ 301 E. Twelfth St. (909)607-4170 (office) ^
^ Claremont CA 91711 USA (909)607-7600 (fax) ^
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Thanks for your explanation and these references. I played
in a gamelan (I mean a real gamelan not a plastic one)
twenty years ago but I've not heard this explanation before.

>Yes, I was thinking of this when I decided to use the
>bowls, but also a piece of Henry Cowell's -- I think it's
>his Set of Five that uses them.

Yes. The mood in your piece is reflective like Cowell. On a
cassette recording of Jalataharangam played by Anayampatti
S. Dhandapani, the playing is quite fast. The interesting
thing is that as the speed increases waves on the surface of
the water modulate the frequency producing a lovely vibrato.
In case you're interested, the cassette, produced by
Sangeetha, Madras is 6ECDB 7091. When my wife and I go back
to India in November (to visit relatives in Mumbai, and
Madras which seems to be the hub of Carnatic music) I'll be
looking for a Jalatharangam CD if such exists.

Greg S