What are you listening to next?

Do you like the Talking Heads? Throwing Muses? XTC?

Remain in Light, Speaking in Tongues are great
House Tornado, University also, and
Skylarking, Oranges and Lemons and English Settlement. . .

all very good. .

Royksopp - What Else Is There? www.youtube.com/watch

> They won't be in Denver.

Exactly.

I'm just yanking your chain there, Stickboy. :-)

I was in a group once that had some jazzers in it; I learned at least to stop *hating* jazz, and to appreciate Coltrane, Monk, Mingus. I can understand Miles Davis' appeal but I can't participate in it.

At the same time, if one were to erase all of the *sound* of jazz, jazz theory, in itself, is an important and elucidating thing to study.

I resemble a jazzer in some ways, in the will to improv or ornament melodic approaches, that sort of thing, but really, I'm a deranged classicist / obsessive composer.

Gamelan has been my "jazz" since I was about 16. I heard a javanese ensemble while on acid, and that was that. Mongolian, Sumatran, and Vietnamese gamelan are relatively obscure, still, here - the Smithsonian has the best collection of obscurities I've found so far.

The email that crapped out had a lot of the educational material on it, but it would still be hard, without the tablature and notation and some explanatory text, to figure out what's happening.

I teach gamelan once a week to a small group; I've found that the best way for me to help people learn is to ignore all mention of "theory" per se, and simply teach the patterns. The brain of the western musician strongly resists gamelan theory, because it is literally upside down and sideways from the theory we're taught (on every level), so focusing simply on what each instrument is to produce seems a good way to head off any conscious complaint (or "helpful suggestions" (arrrrgh) that trained western musicians feel it necessary to make) that might be provoked.

Basically:

• the essential gamelan substrate involves multiple instruments - rather than a single soloist or virtuoso - creating a rhythmic and/or melodic line by uusing interlocking patterns that, when combined, create the whole. This is the 'bedrock' on which ensemble gamelan is based, and upon which a soloist / virtuoso builds when playing with an ensemble.

• the tuning of gamelan instruments involves microtonal variation to create what I usually refer to as "shimmer". There are several different traditional scales used in gamelan (pandro, selesir, pelog, &c); a gamelan will usually incorporate very subtle microtonal variations of pitch between instruments to create a kind of "third harmony" - the same technique is used in (for instance) the vocal techniques of Bulgarian choral music (remember Les Mystere de Voix Bulgare?), and the tuning of strings in turqish / egyptian / arabic music.

• there is a great deal of communication going on between players in a gamelan (especially the Balinese forms / derivations); each player is taking cues from someone - the basic tempo is informed by the kejar (both an instrument and a designation (means "teacher")), the kejar listens for cues from the lead drummer, and most (Balinese) pieces involve a kind of open-endedness in which the song will proceed and change movements according to cues that the lead drummer gives (or sometimes a vocal cue from the kejar or other performer).


Tra la. I'd start a tribe but there's some weird cross-continental politics going on, there. Americans are funny and touchy about it, which is silly in my opinion as every master I've studied with assures me that gamelan is "for you to take, and to play, and to make, freely" but Americans are uptight about it - the sort that get into gamelan, anyway - on some kind of purist "cultural appropriation" tip, which I can understand but not really respect.