ABSTRACT
I became fascinated with the sound of Balinese gamelan when I was quite young, about 12 years old, after being taken to a concert in London by my parents. A gamelan, which is now familiar to many students studying music in universities in Europe and America, is an ensemble from Bali or Java in Indonesia, whose instruments are mostly made of bronze: gongs, rows of small gong kettles, and instruments with metal keys in rows like xylophones. The gamelan I first heard was a modern type called gong kebyar: a loud, fast style with incredibly intricate interlocking patterns on the metallophones. I felt blown away by the look of the instruments, the strangeness of the tuning, and the ringing quality of the sound.
