Path: utzoo!censor!geac!jtsv16!uunet!wuarchive!psuvax1!rutgers!att!cbnewsm!mls
From: mls@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (mike.siemon)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: gamelan tunings
Summary: slendro & pelog
Keywords: Intonation systems, octaves, tuning systems
Message-ID: <6496@cbnewsm.ATT.COM>
Date: 14 Nov 89 17:41:04 GMT
References: <3113@husc6.harvard.edu> <14533@well.UUCP> <3156@husc6.harvard.edu>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 26

In article <3156@husc6.harvard.edu>, elkies@brauer.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes:

> 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?

Jap Kunst, _Music in Java_ has a number of tunings, recorded in cents,
in appendices.  However, for the purposes of your imagined study they
would be of little help. The major "scales" of gamelan music (slendro
and pelog) are rather flexibly defined, with each orchestra tending to
be different from others.  (There is a sort of Wittgensteinian "family
resemblance" among all pelogs, in terms of where the intervals are
large and where smaller and a resemblance of all slendros against pelog
in a more uniform set of intervals.)  The study would have to work with
frequency analyses of the actual instruments.  Of course, if it could 
be done that might even allow for a significant differentiation from a
null hypothesis (but I doubt it :-))

About all I can say is the strictly scientific observation that all
the Javanese gamelans I have heard sound wonderful.
-- 
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...!cucard!dasys1!mls		But of all pains that lead to salvation, this
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