22 posts tagged with "gamelan"

The piece for slide brass and gamelan now has a provisional title, 'Triwikrama', and a provisional programme note:

In the Javanese wayang purwa tradition, triwikrama is the power by which a character is transformed into a giant.

Kresna takes on the form of Brahala Ireng, while Puntadewa becomes his opposite number, Brahala Putih. Rahwana becomes the ten-headed Dasamuka: even Anoman the monkey-god has the ability to change into a triwikrama form.

This piece was developed as part of a project initiated by Dr John Jacobs that seeks to explore the tuning possibilities of slide brass instruments in relation to the non-standard and non-equal tempered tunings found in Javanese music.

The use of the gamelan instruments is only distantly related to Javanese models. The drum ostinato is loosely inspired by certain traditional ladrang patterns. The repeated notes are reminiscent of the gangsaran form, while the upward pitch movement finds echo in the registral ascent through three pathet in a wayang performance.

In coming up with this piece, I didn't set out to portray a character transforming into an angry giant, but it does kind of sound like that :)

---

Update re Javanese pronunciations: Triwikråmå, Brahålå Ireng, Kresnå, Puntådéwå, Dåsåmukå.

Last week I enjoyed being part of a gamelan residency in Poolewe, where Gamelan Nyai Cabe Rawit (Madam Hot Chilli Gamelan) is currently based. Taking part were a members of the local gamelan community, Gamelan Naga Mas, plus some individual players from the England, Ireland, and the United States.

A key part of the residency for me was working with Dr John Jacobs (pictured above right) on compositions for slide brass – trombone and slide trumpet – and gamelan.

Here's an early draft of an as-yet-unnamed piece I'm working on:

slidey_poolewe_02.mp3

Sketch for the piece I'm going to try out next week: gamelan, trombone and slide trumpet.

Obvs this is going to need some explanation in the workshop :)

A very quick SuperCollider demo of some sine waves sliding around in contrary motion. Partly because its a musical gesture I'm interested in using, and partly to see if I can remember anything at all about composing in SuperCollider after a year or so away.

(Which I can :)

I've been chatting with gamelan musician John Jacobs about a piece he is planning to bring to the Poolewe Gamelan Retreat in Septemer. John is also a trumpet player, and tells me that he has for many years been curious about the possibility of using the microtonal affordances of the slide trumpet with gamelan.

Within the Javanese tradition there are existing practices that seek to exploit fine differences in intonation. No two gamelan sets are tuned exactly alike, and players are accustomed to playing the ‘same’ piece using what would to Western ears sound like a completely different collection of musical frequencies. It is also the case that singers and rebab players will make fine adjustements to pitch in response to the pathet (mode) of the music, and not necessarily follow the pitch of the instruments exactly.

Broadening this out, I've been thinking of creating some work or works of my own that contrast two different kinds of musical material:

Fixed discrete pitches that decay (not necessarily equal tempered)​

• gamelan
• detuned piano, guitar, harp
• ‘out-of-tune’ instruments
• pitched digital samples

Continuously variable sustatined pitch​

• slide brass (trombone, slide trumpet)
• slide whistle (?!)
• bowed strings, rebab (Javanese spike fiddle)
• human voice
• digital/analog oscillators

As a first step, I have some ideas for a piece to try out at the residency, with John on slide trumpet, me on trombone, plus the gamelan.

So, the ketipung repair has turned out to be partially succesful:

https://youtu.be/TyF6qkMC5SM

The main part of the repair is fine: gluing a thin circle of goatskin on the underside of the larger head worked well.

The problem was reassembling the drum. I tried to put it all back together dry, but it was impossible to rethread the tensioning thongs. After soaking, the ring of smaller head appeared to shrink, and I could not get it to properly sit back on the rim. It was also an incredible effort to try to get the tensioning thongs back in place and pull them tight enough. I ended up with the end of the straps about eight inches looser than they had been.

The woven tensioning rings had collapsed in the process of soaking, and I was struggling enough anyway with trying to get the thing back to gether without figuring out how they were supposed to fit. I used some cable ties instead.

However: the drum is more or less useable now, which counts as some sort of success. I'm going to do some more work on the tensioning rings, there must be a better way than those cable ties…

The 'ketipung' is the smaller of a pair of drums that are used together in the Javanese gamelan.

The original ketipung that came with our gamelan was damaged many years ago. For as long as I have been with the group it has had a 3cm gash in the larger head, and also a similar size split around the edge:

Covered up with gaffa tape the drum was still more or less playable, but far from ideal.

A good number of years ago now we were able to source a replacement drum from Indonesia, and this one has languished in the cupboard. I decided it was time to have a go at a proper repair!

My plan was to dismantle the drum and attempt a glue and leather patch from the inside of the head. This seemed simpler than trying to make an entirely new head: wiser heads than mine advised that this was a much tricker job than it looked!

First step was to get the drum dismantled. This involved soaking the whole thing in a bath for an hour or so, which loosened up the leather thongs enough so that I could release three of them and take them off the drum:

I sourced an 8 inch circle of shaved goatskin online from a supplier of djembe/bodhran heads. The existing heads are water buffalo, but from previous experience with another drum, I felt that the much thinner goatskin would be good for the patch.

After a lot of reading around about glue options – pva? latex? cyanoacrylate? diisocyanate? – I decided on contact adhesive, which was recommended in many places by people who work with leather. I decided to trust a well-known household brand that I was familiar with, rather than order a specialist product:

By good chance, I found a bowl of the exactly the right size for me to mark and then cut down the goatskin to fit. I followed the glueing instructions carefully, in particular making sure to allow enough time for it to be touch dry.

According to the instructions the bond is instant and requires no support, but I decided to bodge together a disc of plywood and the heaviest thing I could find in the house (an old alter bell) to hold it together while curing.

Ok, let's come back tomorrow and see how we did!

Yesterday I was in London with the Gamelan Composer's Forum, an occasional collective brought together by Aris Daryono and Rob Campion to share approaches to writing for the gamelan. This particular event the series is entitled 'The Intimate Gamelan', and features three pieces written for a gadhon-size ensemble, performing in a private house in South London.

There were three new pieces. 'Sang Empu' ('The Maestro') was Aris' piece scored for cello and ciblon, the cello part being taken by Alice Jones. Aris explains that this piece draws both on the cello tradition within kroncong, where the cello imitates the kendhang, and on the ciblon drummming for palaran.

Rob contributed another piece involving Alice on the cello, 'New Moon'. This featured Rob playing the slenthem with two beaters, like a giant gender: I rather like imagining the cello in this piece as a giant rebab!

My own piece was a one-off assemblage of two of my 'openings', flexible bits of bits of material that I reuse in different ways for different performing occasions. The first part was based on an idea entitled 'fibblestix', an accellerating series of percussive clicks that eventually prompt a response form the gender. The second part of 'Two Openings' – as the overall piece is called – is 'Adrift & Afloat' adapted for one pelog and one slendro gender. I'm very happy indeed with the way Rob and Aris approached this piece, very thoroughly prepared, and sounding very convincing indeed the intimate setting of a private house.

A fascinating evening: I'm glad I made the effort to get down to London to take part.

Just for fun, I did an arrangement of Ball of Sardines for one of Red Note's ‘Noisy Nights’: flute violin, trombone, and the conductor playing kethuk. (This is instead of the piece I was going to write, a masterpiece of algorithmic pointilism to be entitled ‘Moment of Indecision’. I may finish that one day…)

Monday 1 February 2000-2200 – Free Summerhall 1 Summerhall Place Edinburgh - EH9 1QH

Over the winter break, I've been working on some new music for gamelan. Following on from Naga Mas' rather spectacular success with our gamelan-in-outer-space piece Gamelan Untethered, we have plans to do something along the same lines, but this time on an underwater theme. Below is a midi demo of something I'm working on for the group: a sort of sampak/kebyar fusion piece, pulling together some of the livelier ideas from the Javanese traditions with a Balinese-inspired melody.

This may prove a little tricky to play!