Balinese Gamelan: An Introduction [with Dr. Elizabeth Clendinning]

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Classical Nerd is a video series covering music history, theoretical concepts, and techniques, hosted by composer, pianist, and music history aficionado Thomas Little.
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Music:
- Thomas Little: Dance! #2, arranged for Gamelan Gong Kebyar and performed by Thomas Little
- I Made Lasmawan: Blimbing Buluh, performed by Gamelan Giri Murti
- I Pak Sudaraman: Dirghagati (MIDI render)
- Traditional: Cendrawasih, performed by Gamelan Giri Murti
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Questions and comments can be directed to:
nerdofclassical [at] gmail.com
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/ classicalnerd
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All images and audio in this video are for educational purposes only and are not intended as copyright infringement. If you have a copyright concern, please contact me using the above information.

[@ClassicalNerd]

Special thanks to Dr. Clendinning for her time! Visit her Web site at www.eclendinning.com and like Gamelan Giri Murti on Facebook at facebook.com/wfugamelan/. If you want to ask questions in future interviews, head over to www.patreon.com/classicalnerd (where you can also find-among other behind-the-scenes goodies-the recording and score to my Gong Kebyar arrangement of the _Classical Nerd_ theme). Finally … join your local gamelan! One’s probably closer than you think.

[@vrixphillips]

to humor your i googled "atlanta gamelan" and what do you know, there actually is one near me hahaha but of course it's at Emory University, they have everything *eyeroll*

[@TheIndonesianPride]

Thank you for the passion and hard effort you put to help preserve Indonesian traditional music. Most young Indonesian generation sadly neglects it in favor of modern music. Wish you much success and hope many Americans are attracted to it. Greeting from an Indonesian living in Germany.

[@learntaichi8980]

Thank you Dr, Clendinning, for loving and practicing gamelan....Now, gamelan is belong to the world...Love and respect from West Java...

[@krisnarubowo5743]

I do appreciate Dr Clendinning forher explanation. Just imagine, I lived in Bali during high school student in 1950.s when that time I try to understand the gamelan, which I feel more dynamic than Javanese gamelan, fo Iam a Javanebese. Then in 1968 I happened tto stu dy in US and glad could the gamelans in Detroit or Chicago (forget which) Museum and thwen I could attend gamelan prformance at the In Embassy in washingto DC, which thattime accompanied with short lecture given by a UCLA pfofessor. And today I am very happy that I have an ooprtunity to hear such a complete explanataipn on this Balinse gamelan. Thanks to you, and happy taht I could still able to follow the dev.of thech, such as this You tube- internet, that was ubknown in my time when I lived in Bali.,for now Iam 84 years old. Thanks God. ch u as

[@elizabethclendinning139]

Awesome job, Thomas! As always, I love the balance of serious information and humor. Thanks for interviewing me and showing love for Gamelan Giri Murti here in Winston-Salem. For anyone watching, if you want to play, come on by! My book now has a confirmed title--American Gamelan and the Ethnomusicological Imagination (University of Illinois Press)--and will hopefully be out by the end of 2020.

[@LukeGeaney]

Just found this! Haha awesome!

[@quickhenrymedia]

Quite informative and helpful for a beginner (me!). The explanations and visuals you use really add to the message. Thanks!

[@Composeyourselfcare]

Excellent video!! Thank you both.

[@SterioCast]

Thank you so much for the video! I have the opportunity to start graduate studies at Florida State in the fall and am excited to play and learn more about Gamelan music. Wonderful introduction. Keep up the informative videos!

[@MattLeGroulx]

Great video, thanks! Would love to see more gamelan videos!

[@bruceinoregon8163]

Dr. Clendinning - thank you for your contributions to music!!! I was "raised," in the late '70s and '80's on Piston and Aldwell Schacter. but I have also come to appreciate your theory text and that of Benward.

[@ClassicalNerd]

The theory text author is Jane Clendinning, Elizabeth's mother. Very musical family!

[@bruceinoregon8163]

@@ClassicalNerd OIC! Yes indeed. Thanks for the reply.

[@elizabethclendinning139]

The theory text is my mother's! :) Music runs in the family.

[@esterhammerfic]

Great job Thomas (and on your other videos as well). I recently made a video about kotekan but your video is more wide-reaching where mine is more specialized. This was obviously a lot of work, so hats off to both of you! Ps, that gamelan has a wild tuning

[@robertjones9598]

Thanks for the informative video!

[@kelanarasha7186]

Thank you so much for your appreciation and effort you made to study and preserve this traditional music from Indonesia especially from Bali. I am suggesting you also to take a look at Javanese and Sundanese Gamelan from Java Island. Thank you.

[@denyjadul3371]

Gamelan is the real heavy METAL, specially balinese gamelan 😄. Thank you for introducing gamelan to the World

[@pjbailey2313]

Absolutely fascinating !! Thank you.

[@Sevish]

I love how you switched up your channel intro/outro music for this one episode. Excellent stuff by the way

[@itsenzo3000]

Sevish my guy how are you doing!

[@wickman.r4662]

The Chicago Field Museum has a gamelán that was used in public performances at that museum; perhaps about the decade of 1980 - 1995. A University professor organized those activities. I can mimic their percussive hand clapping

[@gdavis9296]

Where can I listen to more of the tune starting at 6:53? It’s beautiful

[@gf1478]

Fantastic video! Thank you. Gamelan wafted through the air decades ago when I walked from Balinese village to village.... I think that softer Javanese degung stuff is more accessible to western ears so is the sonic background of tourist Bali... I did play it to my nearly born kid when she was in her mom. Later, when she had tantrums, it chilled her out. What magical stuff...

[@skippysounds541]

This is great!!! Way to make my music research fun. Thanks to all.

[@jeffdawson2786]

Wonderful video. Thank you. ❤️

[@febilogi]

Thank you for posting this! God bless you

[@peopleofclay]

Wonderful to find this. Thank you.

[@imadesentana8673]

Wonderul

[@wp6007]

Amazing video, so much hard to find info in one package!

[@MrLanceDaily]

More of this!

[@morgananastasi9472]

Hey, you ought to do a video on how you, personally, markup/annotate your scores. I think it would be fascinating! Everyone has a bit of a different system of marking up a score when listening to a piece. What sorts of things do you write in the margins of your scores? How do you annotate them when you're studying a new piece? Maybe show some of your most heavily-annotated scores? Etc. I think that would be a fascinating video. Keep up the good work!

[@ClassicalNerd]

I'm one of the few people who doesn't tend to mark other composers' scores unless I'm a) noting a typo between my edition and the urtext or b) inserting a fingering for a tricky passage. Drafts of my _own_ pieces, however, get marked up to the point that they're barely legible with notes to myself on what to rework.

[@Koropokel]

very interesting!

[@jacobdgm]

Nice to see balinese gamelan music getting represented! I'd be interested to hear Gamelan Giri Murti - are there any recordings of the ensemble out there?

[@ClassicalNerd]

Unfortunately not; the ensemble's never been professionally recorded.

[@febilogi]

Hello Mr. Classical Nerd. I am always coming back to your video and hear your explanation, I find it very helpful. If you don't mind, could you please share with us the complete piece on 6:54 ? I search it all the time in internet and ask my Indonesian friends but I still couldn't find it. Salam dari Indonesia ☺️👍

[@ClassicalNerd]

That is a MIDI mockup of a piece called "Dirghagati" composed for Gamelan Giri Murti by I Pak Sudaraman. I don't have the rights to the full piece, nor a recording of us actually _playing_ the full thing (although we did). I was only able to excerpt that render under the fair use exemption to copyright law.

[@febilogi]

@@ClassicalNerd I see. But still, thanks a lot for highlighting it and for the fast respond, at least I have more clue now. I hope you and your family are always healthy and may god always shower his blessings on you ☺️

[@elizabethclendinning139]

I Wayan Sudirana. His other works can be found under Gamelan Yuganada@@ClassicalNerd

[@sallylauper8222]

You studied Gamelan in middle school in Florida? I've been to Indonesia a few times, but all I ever did was listen to Gamelan!

[@SlyHikari03]

Gamelan is hella cool.

[@abelrose3730]

I really enjoyed the video and found it very informative, and I appreciate that key terms were written down on the screen. I would love it if the whole video was captioned, though, so that it’s more easily understandable and accessible to more people! The auto-generated captions have a lot of mistakes and don’t spell things correctly.

[@brendaboykin3281]

Thank you, Madam. Thank you, Sir. 🌹🌹🌹❤️❤️🌹🌹🌹

[@Acoustic-Rabbit-Hole]

Sitting here with my pitch meter. The gongs at 9:20 are tuned to A444hz Shumann Resonance, Earth's relative atmospheric frequency, not standard A440hz. Sorry, Adam Neely.

[@Kurtlane]

Thank you very much for this video. I played Gamelan Gong Kebyar in 1980s. All gangsa instruments had either 5 keys (one octave) or 10 keys (2 octaves). So I am confused about the 7 or 14 keys, but still tied to the 5-tone. How does it work? Are there different keys and modulations, like in Western music? Thanks.

[@ClassicalNerd]

Giri Murti is a hybrid set between Gong Kebyar and Angklung, hence some of its more unusual aspects. I'm part of MIT's Gamelan Galak Tika now, which is a true Gong Kebyar outfit, and it is as you described. As far as I know, the concept of modulation is entirely foreign to the Balinese, although I'm sure it has to have been taken into consideration by contemporary Balinese composers.

[@esterhammerfic]

@@ClassicalNerd @Kurtlane Funny thing about that -- they do modulate a lot more these days (it's called "modulasi", Wayne Vitale has a good paper on it), but they have done so since the days of the seven note Semar Pegulingan. Interestingly, they generally stay within or modulate between a given 5 note set even when more notes are available. Something very historically ingrained in Balinese composers, evidently.

[@MYGAS21]

What is the interval between female and male pairs? The professor didn't specify. Why? I imagine it's not fixed but an approximation would be nice. There is a video on KZbin were someone plays a pair in comparison and putting a tuner on the speaker I made some measurements: I can't say for sure, but they seemed a semitone apart. Can anyone confirm this? I can't find any information on the internet on this topic. Wikipedia and gamelan fan sites I managed to find, do not specify either.

[@ClassicalNerd]

There's no specification, although in my experience, quite a bit less than a semitone is the standard. The goal is something that sounds to Western ears as "beating," not as two distinct pitches at the same time.

[@ivanhendr]

Greetings from East Java

[@Acoustic-Rabbit-Hole]

Dear, Java-man: Can you give me any information about what pitch-reference is used for Gamelan. The instruments here are tuned up to the A444hz range. As I understand, Eastern music prefers to tune higher and standardized A440hz Concert Pitch. I am a sound healer.

[@syhusada1130]

So, are the multiple keys played at once? Is it agreeable to call it polytonal?

[@ClassicalNerd]

There is a style of Balinese gamelan called _gender wayang_ where players wield two mallets and dampen with their wrists, making it one of the most difficult styles of gamelan despite requiring a minimal number of players (with four being the maximum). I would caution against using Western terms like “tonality” to describe non-Western music; while it can be helpful to understand the rudiments of certain concepts, it’s largely unhelpful if you really want to understand how the Balinese understand their music.

[@brokeboy8869]

don't forget the Sundanese gamelan (Degung)

[@MineCraft-lk8vv]

Hi Classical Nerd can u answer my question? How does music reflect history and culture of a place?

[@ClassicalNerd]

That's a supremely broad question. Are you referring to Balinese gamelan in particular, or something else?

[@MineCraft-lk8vv]

@@ClassicalNerd Balinese gamelan

[@ClassicalNerd]

I don't feel like I know enough about Balinese gamelan to give you a good answer.

[@MineCraft-lk8vv]

@@ClassicalNerd anything work's i just need the answer for my activity 😊

[@ClassicalNerd]

If I knew enough about Balinese gamelan to adequately answer that question, I wouldn't have interviewed Dr. Clendinning for this episode.

[@NickBatinaComposer]

YAS shoutout to FSU!!!

[@adolw3266]

4:58

[@InevitablyBo]

Good for homeschooling 👍🏽

[@MineCraft-lk8vv]

How many players are there in Balinese gamelan?

[@ClassicalNerd]

It depends! For a lot of American ensembles, up to 30 can be accommodated, but this is largely incumbent on the number of instruments in a group (there's no functional upper limit as far as I know, kind of like how a Western orchestra can be theoretically quite large but practically has kind of an upper limit). However, certain traditional styles, like _gender wayang,_ which is played with two mallets per hand, is complete at two players and can only accommodate up to four.

[@MineCraft-lk8vv]

@@ClassicalNerd Thank you so much! for your reply it was very helpful.

[@TheRmoroni]

Chicago field museum had a room with instruments played by mechanical attachments when you pressed a button.it was a rather large exhibit as i recall it.this video shows something new kzbin.info/www/bejne/mX7Xi2iFpbmBgbM i prefer the old exhibits its too much like Disneyland these days.

[@lavendelle_swift]

Asian music. Next (eg. Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, etc...)

[@Buzz-Of-Craze]

learn gamelan make you smart

[@Acoustic-Rabbit-Hole]

Bach make you smart. Gamelan make you wise.

[@R.LeeOtherson-dt8bx]

I want to hear about gamelan from an Indonesian composer, not some suburban texan librarian type feminist chick full of mastery of the obvious who's major concern is menu familiarity. Americans Out!!!

[@ClassicalNerd]

Your exclusivist mindset is not shared the Balinese, who encourage learning and cultural exchange.

[@R.LeeOtherson-dt8bx]

@@ClassicalNerd . Oh? If only that has anything to do with their ibtentions, which idea of "exchange" includes marketing off your culture and using you for their personal professional gain and profit!

[@ClassicalNerd]

I don't know why you continue to be so worked up about an introductory video.

[@R.LeeOtherson-dt8bx]

@@ClassicalNerd . Me neither. Indigestion, perhaps. Too much Philip Glass today. My apologies♟

[@barnard-baca]

Why to Americans start every sentence with "So..." ? Very irritating. good video, nonetheless..

[@random40s]

So, wait... What? It's meant to not be in tune? I get the pentatonic, and diatonic scale idea, but the tuning tho I don't get as they sound like they are tuned by a 3 year old..

[@ClassicalNerd]

"In tune" is a Western concept that really can't be applied to Balinese gamelan in any meaningful way.