Page 3 | The gamelan goes virtual

Aural awareness

Contents

The gamelan goes virtual (1)

Playing the virtual Javanese gamelan (2)

Aural awareness (3)

Achievements (4)

Seleh Notes Volume 12 Number 3 June 2005

© John Williams

The listening area promotes aural awareness through the directed analysis of three performances of ‘Kebogiro’:

Build-up:
a non-authentic performance of the piece in which the instruments enter one by one

Simple:
‘Kebogiro’ without any embellishing layers

Decorated:
‘Kebogiro’ with bonang playing gembyang or imbal and sekaran.

In addition, there are activities that promote self-assessment and evaluation of the user’s performances and compositions, along with opportunities to gain knowledge of the cultural context of the music, supported by video demonstrations of instruments.

 

All of this is presented using an interface that requires no learning curve or prior knowledge, promoting an ease of navigation throughout the application, and an ability to get straight into its content.

All of the sounds and performances were created using the school’s gamelan and student musicians led by Andy Channing.

Step by step tutorials are provided showing how a particular part derives its notes from the balungan.

When the user is ready, they can enter the notes on a live grid, which automatically displays their balungan for each phrase in the cycle.

A number of techniques for embellishment are featured, including gembyang and imbal and sekaran.

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