What are characteristics of Balinese music?

Balinese gamelan, a form of Indonesian classical music, is louder, swifter and more aggressive than Javanese music. Balinese gamelan also features more archaic instrumentation than modern Javanese gamelans. Balinese instruments include bronze and bamboo xylophones.

What does Balinese gamelan include?

Balinese Gamelan Angklung Like the Javanese gamelan, the instruments in Balinese gamelan includes metallophones and gongs. However, there are more metallophones than gongs in Balinese gamelan. The metal keys in Balinese metallophones are ticker than those of Javanese.

How would you describe Balinese gamelan?

The Balinese gamelan is a staple of Balinese culture. Composed of a combination of metallophones, xylophones, drums, gongs, and sometimes flutes, the Balinese can compose and play magnificent tunes to suit the need of the occasion. Gamelan is often reserved for use in ceremonies.

What is Balinese gamelan used for?

Balinese gamelan is often used to accompany religious ceremonies and entertainment. In terms of religion, Balinese Gamelan is often displayed to accompany the running of religious ceremonies or to accompany sacred traditional dances.

How does Balinese musicians play their instruments?

Generally the metallophones are played using one hand to strike the keys with a mallet while the other hand damps each key after it is struck to prevent the reverberation from clouding the overall sound, though sometimes a special two-handed technique is used where each hand both plays and quickly damps the keys.

What gives Balinese gamelan music its shimmering quality?

In most ensembles, instruments are arranged in pairs, with each instrument tuned slightly apart from its partner to create a vibrant acoustical ‘beating’ sound that makes the music come alive and gives Balinese gamelan its characteristic pulsating, shimmering quality so different from Javanese gamelan.

What is the traditional musical ensemble of the Javanese Sundanese and Balinese?

gamelan, also spelled gamelang or gamelin, the indigenous orchestra type of the islands of Java and Bali, in Indonesia, consisting largely of several varieties of gongs and various sets of tuned metal instruments that are struck with mallets.

What does Balinese gamelan sound like?

The difference between the music of Java and Bali is striking, as different as night and day: the soft, shockless resonance of the Javanese gamelan has been refined to create a mood of untroubled calm and mystic serenity; by contrast, Balinese gamelan is vigorous, rhythmic and explosive, with a bright percussive sound …

What are the musical ensembles and instruments used for the Javanese and the Balinese styles?

Contrasting the large gamelan orchestras of Java and Bali, one finds that the soft-playing instruments gambang (xylophone), tyelempung (zitcher), rebab (bowed lute), suling (vertical flute), and human voice, all present in Java, are either totally absent or relatively little-used in Bali.

Where do Javanese and Balinese play their music?

Although we find similar types of music and ensemble all around Southeast Asia, as in Thailand and Cambodia, for example, gamelan music as is known today is particular to four nearby islands: Java, Madura, Bali, and Lombok.

What is the harmony of Balinese gamelan?

Gamelan is sort of traditional music instrument rich in Indonesian culture. The beauty of gamelan lies on the harmony between the instruments, namely the percussion instruments, being the most typical of this set of traditional instruments. …

What is the difference between Balinese gamelan and Javanese gamelan?

On the one hand, Balinese Gamelan music has still strong similarity with Javanese music. For example, some Balinese gamelans share important traits with older styles of Javanese Gamelan, which are no longer heard in Java. Yet, on the other, there are major differences.

What are the musical instruments of Javanese and Balinese gamelan?

Javanese and Balinese Gamelan Music. In a typical Javanese Gamelan, the instruments can be divided as follow: time-marking instruments (gongs of different sizes), melodic instruments (the “suling”, an end-blown flute; and the rebab, a bowed spike fiddle, which plays the balungan, or fixed melody),…

Is Balinese gamelan a colotonic?

Balinese music is also based on a colotonic structure, but it is not always as evident. Regarding this, what are the characteristics of Balinese gamelan?

What is gamelan music?

Distinctly unique to the islands of Bali and Java, gamelan is revered as an ancient art that is intrinsically tied to Balinese culture and religion. This style of music stands in complete contrast to Western genres, thus lending itself as a worthy study for ethnomusicologists.