It is the opening day of the temple feast, and the children have assembled at the house to carry their gamelan to the temple. I give them each a cloth of large black and black check for a headdress, which will mark them as a club, and they all proceed to pick bright red blossoms from the hibiscus shrubs and (Chapter 1 from Balinese Music: Periplus/University of Washington Press 1991]  by Michael Tenzer  Click Details

A tight interaction of melodic, rhythmic and textural components sustains the powerful orchestral gamelan music of Bali. The building blocks of the music share many traits with the larger social organization of Balinese villages, which provide a compelling setting for music that is an integral part of daily life. Click Details

Throughout this book gamelan gong kebyar has been the "default" ensemble for discussing musical instruments and technicalities because it is the orchestra that visitors are most likely to encounter in a formal performance setting, and the kind of gamelan that most Balinese are likely to know something about. Click details

Gamelan Angklung
At temple festivals, the exuberance of the 4-tone gamelan angklung's melodies ring out in bold contrast to the solemn and grave lelambatan compositions often heard playing simultaneously right across the courtyard.Click details

Many visitors to Bali hear their first Balinese music played on a pair or quartet of gender wayang, placed off to the side in the hotel lobby. Being relegated to background accompaniment is too often the status quo for this elite chamber gamelan. But its players, over the generations, have slyly exacted their revenge by concocting the most complex, technically difficult, and respected music in all of Bali. Click details

Bamboo grown in west Bali reaches monstrous proportions the likes of which are not known elsewhere on the island. This quirk of nature has been exploited by local musicians with the creation of the gamelan jegog, so named for the remarkable jegogan that is the sonic core of the ensemble.Click details

One of the most striking features of Balinese gamelan music - especially the modern gong kebyar orchestra - is kotekan ,the rapid interlocking figuration that permeates nearly all kebyar compositions. It creates a unique sonic impression: a group of gangsa (bronze metallophones) struck with hard wooden mallets produce an intricately patterned layer of sound above the more sustained tones of the lower instruments; the reong, a row of small tuned gongs played by four musicians, creates a different (but equally complex) figuration of a softer attack and sound color; and leading them all are a pair of drummers who play yet another kind of interlocking figuration. Click Details

Kotekan Telu
Whereas the two kinds of kotekan already described use relatively simple techniques to divide a figuration - either filling in the steps of mostly scale-wise motion (nyog cag) or alternating between a tone and its upper neighbor (nyok cok) - kotekan telu opens the door to a much wider range of combinations, both rhythmic and melodic. Here the technique of sharing tones between the sangsih and polos becomes pivotal, in a very literal sense.Click details

Kotekan Empat
With kotekan empat, the possibilities for combining polos and sangsih part into intricate figurations again expand dramatically. Here the cells of the figuration span four tones (empat, lit. four), with the polos normally taking the lower two and the sangsih the upper two. Click details

In the following discussion of specific techniques used in kotekan, it is important to keep in mind the principle of melodic elaboration outlined above. In order that the relationship of melody to figuration remains clear, they will always be shown together, with the pokok melody notated below the kotekan. Click details

Melodic Elaboration
In looking at the way kotekan relates to the overall musical structure of a Balinese composition, many questions immediately arise. For example, is there a harmonic system at work, based on some chordal or intervallic scheme? Is kotekan built on a purely rhythmic framework? Is it partly improvised? Or is kotekan itself the actual basis of the music from which the other parts are derived? Click details

The technique used to play the gangsa is critical in the execution of kotekan parts. The wooden mallet used to strike the keys is held in one hand, leaving the other hand free to damp the key's vibration after it is struck. The motion of the damping hand therefore mirrors that of the playing hand, following it along as its shadow. Click details

Gamelan music is the sum of diverse foreign influences. Pitch relationships from China, bronze instruments from southeast Asia, drums and modal practice from India, bowed strings from the middle east, and even military styles from Europe contributed to the traditional music we hear in Java and Bali today. Click details