home > Javanese gamelan gadhonCentral Javanese gamelan gadhon uses the soft instruments of the large gamelan ensemble to create a magical atmosphere. In Java it is considered to be of a highly refined (halus) style. The overall sound is very mellow and ideal as background music to add an exotic feel to your event.
The music Javanese gamelan music can be classed as heterophonic: the instruments play the same melody but each interpret it in their own characteristic way.
Unlike Western music where beat 1 is strongest (e.g. 1 2 3 4), in gamelan, beat 4 is most important (e.g. 1 2 3 4). The music is divided into gatras (groups of four beats of the balungan or skeletal melody) which each end on a seleh note, a strong note on which all the instruments arrive at roughly the same time.
Irama is feature of Javanese gamelan. This can be loosely translated as levels of expansion and refers to the metrical relationships between the instruments. For example, when the irama moves from tanggung to dados, the gender has twice as many notes to play for each balungan (skeletal melody) note. The balungan appears to get twice as slow and the gender player "doubles". It is up to the kendhang player to choose when to change irama.
Two scales can be used: 5-tone slendro and 7-tone pelog. Within each scale there are three different modes, called pathet.
The Instruments
The rebab, a two-stringed fiddle, is the melodic leader of the ensemble. The rebab player signals changes between sections of a piece, and to a new piece.
The gender is a tube-resonated metallophone with fourteen keys suspended by string above metal tubes. It has a range of two and a half octaves and is played with two padded beaters. One beater is held in each hand and other parts of the hands and wrists are used to damp the notes as the next note is played. The two hands seem to move independently, sometimes in parallel motion and at other times contrapuntally. The gender plays improvisatory patterns called cengkok which link one seleh note to the next. Each pattern can be played in many ways and the musician chooses how to play each one at the time, according to the style of the piece and the irama.
The slenthem is a low-pitched tube-resonated metallophone played with a large padded beater held in one hand. The other hand is used for damping. The balungan is played on the slenthem.
The kendhang, two-headed drums played with the hands, control the tempo of the music and signal changes in irama. Different drums are used according to the style of the music; some lively and others more restrained. The kendhang player plays set drum patterns on the ketipung and kendhang ageng, switching to drum sekaran ("flower") patterns on the medium-sized ciblon drum at certain points.
The gongs, kempul (small hanging gongs) and kenong (large horizontal gongs) act as structural markers and are played at certain points in each cycle, depending on the type of piece being played. The gong ageng (large gong) marks the end of each cycle of music.
Several other instruments can also be included: the gambang (xylophone), suling (end-blown bamboo flute), and siter (plucked stringed instrument). Vocal parts called gerongan can be added in certain sections of pieces, as can alok vocal calls that mark out the gong structure of the music.
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