Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!brauer!elkies
From: elkies@brauer.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: gamelan tunings
Keywords: Intonation systems, octaves, tuning systems
Message-ID: <3156@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 13 Nov 89 19:29:12 GMT
References: <3113@husc6.harvard.edu> <14533@well.UUCP>
Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu
Reply-To: elkies.zariski.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies)
Organization: Harvard Math Department
Lines: 41

[There must be a better newsgroup for this than comp.music!]

I wrote:

:(*) Something I've been wondering about intermittently, and reminded
:of by your mention of gamelan music:  Gamelan music is dominated by
:instruments with an overtone series very different from the familiar
:overtone series that dominates most Western music.  It also uses
:very different tunings, tunings which unlike their Western counterpart
:developed (I assume) without knowledge of overtones.  Thus it could
:make an interesting test case for the perennial debate about the
:naturalness of a system of tonality based on the overtone series.
:Has any significant research been done into the relation or lack
:thereof between gamelan tunings and gamelan overtones?

csz@well.UUCP (Carter Scholz) responded:

>I've played Javanese gamelan for 4 years, have studied with Javanese
>musicians, and have investigated the tuning systems & discussed them
>at length.  The idea of a tuning derived from the overtones of the
>instruments is seductive, but will not, I think, hold water.  As I
>understand it, the tuning is set on the gender, which is a resonated
>instrument with a waveform as close to a sine wave as you could ask.
>The other, more clangorous instruments are tuned from this reference.
>(However, there is still a great deal of empiricism involved in
>stretching the octaves, etc.  The main point is that the instrument
>builder does not seem to be listening to any overtones when determining
>the tuning; he sings, and uses the sinusoidal gender for reference.)

But this only answers half of my question: the tuning is not
*consciously* derived from the overtone series (which is precisely
why it might be a good test case; had the tuning been purposefully
rooted in the gamelan's overtones it would be just another version
of the chicken-and-egg debate re Western tuning).  The interesting
problem is whether gamelan intonation is *subconsciously* influenced
by overtone reinforcement.  For starters, can you post or give a
reference to the frequency ratios of the common gamelan scales?
Or is the scale so flexible that such questions are meaningless?

--Noam D. Elkies (elkies@zariski.harvard.edu)
  Dept. of Mathematics, Harvard University