Composition
Composition
This page is still under development
There are many ways to compose music.
This page is to help you if you are on your own or have had little or no experience in composing music for Javanese gamelan.
You have been playing with the Gamelan Room app, maybe you were trying out the damping guide and came up with a tune or rhythm you liked. There are many ways to write down what you have been playing. Either to help you remember or to share it with others so they can play it too.
• Write down the numbers
• Use a graphic score
• Use western music notation
These are just a few of the ways you can get your ideas down.
As you will have worked out. Gamelan notes are named using numbers.
In the 5-note ‘slendro’ scale they are numbered 1,2,3,5,6 and in the 7-note ‘pelog’ scale (if you have the full version of the app) 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
The obvious thing then is to write the numbers down that you played.
For example 36363632
Try playing the notes as they are written above.
• What does it sound like to you?
• How much information have you received?
• Do you know if you are playing it right?
Imagine the ticking of a clock;
Is that how you played it?
What if the rhythm was different?
Have a listen to this →
You can probably tell it’s not always playing with the ‘tick/tock/tick/tock’ rhythm.
Each ‘tick/tock’ beat has another beat halfway between. Some people would call that ‘and’ e.g., tick/and/tock/and/tick/and so on.
This could still be confusing especially as you do not want to have to write tick/tock all the time!
A common way to mark this is by drawing a line over the notes.
Take away all the tick/tock and the previous example ends up like this:
