Presentation Notes

1.

Gamelan Ensemble. For the traditional songs we are given sheets with
notation are slowly building up our repertoire of the songs we know. For
these songs we take turns on the different instruments in the Gamelan.
The instruments are set into melody and percussion. Although all melody
instruments play the same melody there are different techniques for them
e.g damping the sound. Some people have brought in melody lines that
they have come up with and we have been working on their compositions
and coming up with what all the instruments play for them. In the first few
weeks we did improvisation with the instruments to get us comfortable
with the sound they made and how they were to be played.
2. How? Learning is done usually informally, with sheets given to us with
notation of the melody as a guide but for the long term we are encouraged
to have most of the songs known by memory. We are also given a
glossary sheet to learn different concepts and words, as well as a sheet
giving us all of the names of the songs in the ensemble.