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- Nate Mitchell October 2021
- Jon Silpayamanant October 2021
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Emic term for the Gamelan's "shimmering" sound?
Hey all, I was looking to see if there's an emic term for the "shimmering" quality that is always ascribed to the sound of the Gamelan ensemble, both due to the acoustic properties of its various instruments, and the stretched octave tunings employed.
You constantly see scholars making this judgment (Tenzer, Sethares, etc.), but I don't know that I've ever seen someone discuss how that term relates to Balinese ways of conceiving sound. (Though this article mentions the term "matemahan" or "movement" as related to the phenomenon: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4622207)
You constantly see scholars making this judgment (Tenzer, Sethares, etc.), but I don't know that I've ever seen someone discuss how that term relates to Balinese ways of conceiving sound. (Though this article mentions the term "matemahan" or "movement" as related to the phenomenon: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4622207)
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Ombak (literally "waves" in Indonesian) refers to the undulation in paired gamelan instruments that are tuned slightly off from each other. The ‘female’ instrument is lower; ‘male’ instrument is higher. Tones are considered dead without ombak.