Pelog Scales Research Articles

Knowledge and Power in Indonesian Traditional Music: A Genealogical Approach on the Transformation of the Meaning of Karawitan

The term Karawitan is generally known to mean gamelan music, more specifically Javanese, Balinese, and Sundanese gamelan music tuned to slendro and pelog scales. However, the term is discursive and has meaning in wider contexts as well. The term karawitan first appeared during the colonial period in royal courts on Java to indicate Javanese gamelan music. However, through its nation-wide university karawitan programs, the Indonesian government and art academics use the term to refer to all Indonesian traditional music practices (Musik Nusantara).Thisarticle gives a postcolonial account of the discourse surrounding the term karawitan to trace the transformation of its meaning. It employs Michel Foucault's theory of discourse and genealogical research methods to explore colonial-era and post-colonial literature using the term karawitan. By reviewing various discourses about karawitan, authors provide a more nuanced understanding about how power operates in the context of traditional music in Indonesia. We illustrate how the meaning of “karawitan” has been re-defined and contested through discursive practices. In general, these transformations demonstrate a shift from colonial power to national power

Pelatihan Gamelan Sanggar Budaya Hamong Rasa Guna Meneruskan Generasi di Kabupaten Wonosobo

<p><em>Supporting music has the power to represent the culture of a person or group at a particular time. He understood to have a basis for understanding, determining the ways and actions in each note produced. The color of the voice, the pitch and the musical work in each region have many differences. Because in essence, music is a work of art that is here is an aesthetic symbol of every different cultural community.Gamelan is a musical instrument that represents or depicts Javanese culture. Some Javanese gamelan in Surakarta, Yogyakarta and Cirebon, among others are Kyai Guntur Madu, Kyai Guntur Sari, Kyai Naga Wilaga and Gong Sekati. This orchestra has a pentatonic scale in the slendro scale system and the pelog scale system. Each gamelan has an honorary name as it deserves a sacred heirloom. slendro on the gamelan used as the research sample. While the independent variables are the frequency and color of the sound of each chord.</em><em></em></p>

A Review of The Sundanese Scale Theory

This article aims to discuss Kusumadinata’s scale theory in Sundanese music which has been taught in educational institutions in West Java, Indonesia. According to Kusumadinata’s scale theory, sorog and pelog are scales derived from salendro scale in gamelan salendro performance. In my previous research, I investigated three genres of Sundanese performing arts which have existed since the Hindu era, namely goong renteng, pantun, and tarawangsa. The results indicate that the pelog scale has independently existed since the Hindu era. Then, I analyzed the phenomenon that occurs in the gamelan salendro performance, i.e., its melody (rebab and vocals) conventionally modulate into scale ‘like sorog’, occasionally into scale ‘like pelog’. In contrast, the instruments of gamelan are in the salendro scale. However, the analysis on the sorog in the previous research was not enough, so that in this paper, I will focus on the sorog. To find out the relationship between melody (vocal and rebab) and gamelan instruments, I examined the actual performances of gamelan salendro and wayang golek purwa. It became clear that the salendro scale derives four types of sorog. The findings of this study indicate that sorog has existed since the 19th century by this phenomenon, and the scale now called sorog is a scale derived from salendro.

Classification of Gamelan Tones Based on Fractal Analysis

Gamelan is an ensemble music originated from Indonesia. Gamelan have been made manually but had 7 tonnes for Pelog scale or 5 tonnes for Slendro scale. It is need to classify gamelan tones for digital musical processing for various objectives like learning, teaching, or composing. Fractal analysis can be used to classify physical phenomena like musical tones signal. One of fractal method was Higuchi that is suitable in computing fractal dimension for time series data as musical signals. In this paper, we propose the Higuchi fractal dimension to distinguish gamelan signal tones. Our experiment show that Demung Pelog tones can be classified properly until 82.85%. This result encourages to classify gamelan tones not only for other instruments but also for Slendro scale.

The Processing of Pitch and Scale: An ERP Study of Musicians Trained Outside of the Western Musical System

The current study extends the efforts of Bischoff Renninger, Granot and Donchin (2003) to non-Western musical systems and focuses specifically on Event- Related Potential (ERP) responses to scalar deviations within the Javanese pelog scale by groups of musicians trained within the Western and Javanese systems. The principal aim is to ascertain whether results found in previous experiments may be obtained cross- culturally. Participants include five subjects trained in the Western system only (control group) and five subjects trained in both the Western and Javanese systems (experimental group). Tasks include identifying scalar deviations within the Western diatonic scale, identifying scalar deviations within the Javanese pelog scale, and identifying target letters in a visual control task. ERP and overt behavioral responses are recorded. Results show significant differences between group responses to diatonic and Javanese scale conditions. Interesting results also arise in terms of how tones and intervals in the different scales are conceptualized by subjects in both groups. Control subjects especially tend to assimilate pelog scale intervals to intervals in the Western equal- tempered scale.

Children's Perception of Native and Nonnative Musical Scales

The influence of musical experience on children's perception of culturally familiar (native) and culturally unfamiliar (nonnative) musical scales was studied. Western musician and nonmusician 10- to 13-year olds were tested in detection of mistunings in a melody based on either the Western major, Western minor, or Javanese pelog scales. In the Javanese scale context, the performance of the musicians was not different from that of the nonmusicians, and neither group detected mistunings in this context significantly better than chance. The child musicians' performance in the Western contexts, however, was better than in the Javanese context and also was better than that of the child nonmusicians. In contrast, the child nonmusicians' performance in the Western contexts was significantly better than chance, but these children did not have significantly greater success at detecting mistunings in the Western than Javanese contexts. These findings suggest that informal musical acculturation results in somewhat better perception of native than nonnative scales by 10-13 years of age but that formal musical experience can facilitate the acculturation process. These results are compared with other published data on infants and adults tested with the same stimuli.

Innateness, Experience, and Music Perception

Musical acculturation from infancy to adulthood was studied by testing the abilities of Western 6-month-olds and adults to notice mistunings in melodies based on native Western major, native Western minor, and non-native Javanese pelog scales. Results indicated that infants were similarly able to perceive native and non-native scales. Adults, however, were generally better perceivers of native than non-native scales. These findings suggest that infants are born with an equipotentiality for the perception of scales from a variety of cultures and that subsequent culturally specific experience substantially influences music perception.

Musical acculturation in the first year of life

Questions concerning the developmental timetable for the acquisition of musical knowledge have been studied very little. This study of infants suggests a precocious onset of musical scale knowledge, an important aspect of music cognition, as findings indicate that infants better perceived mistunings in native than in nonnative scales. Six‐ and 12‐month‐olds were tested in noticing increases in the frequency of a randomly selected note in a melody based on the Western major scale (most common Western scale based on the semitone), the Western augmented scale (infrequently used Western scale but also based on the semitone), and the Javanese pelog scale (nonnative scale not based on the semitone). An operant head‐turn procedure was used in which the well‐tuned version of each melody was played repeatedly through a loudspeaker, and the infants learned to turn their heads toward the speaker in anticipation of a visual reinforcer when they noticed a frequency change in one of the melody notes. The 12‐month‐olds' performance was better on the major scale than on either the augmented or pelog scales. In contrast, the 6‐month‐olds' performance was better on both the major and augmented scales than on the pelog scale, and their performance was similar on the major and augmented scales. These findings suggest that substantial musical acculturation occurs as early as 6 months of age and that infants may proceed from acquisition of knowledge of the semitone as a basic structure of Western music to acquisition of more specific knowledge of the major scale by 12 months of age.

Native and non‐native music perception by children

The development of culturally specific perceptual knowledge for music was investigated. Using a background/contrast paradigm originally developed for speech perception [Eilers et al., J. Speech Hear. Res. 20, 766–780 (1977)], Western 10–13 year olds and adults were tested in detection of mistunings in melodies based on native Western major and Western minor scales and a non‐native Javanese pelog scale. Each age group was divided equally into musically inexperienced and musical subjects. The musically inexperienced adults had a perceptual bias for the melodies based on their native scales, but the adult musicians did not appear to share this bias, since they were able to generalize their knowledge of Western scales to the perception of a melody based on the Javanese scale. In contrast to the adults, the musician 10–13 yeat olds had a perceptual bias for the melodies based on Western scales, and the nonmusician 10–13 year olds did not share this bias. The musically inexperienced adults' performance was significantly better than that of the musically inexperienced children on both the Western and Javanese scales, and the same was true for the musician adults and children, indicating development of perceptual ability that is independent of musical training. Perception of Western mistunings was significantly related to the childrens' total years of musical experience and the amount of time devoted to practicing a musical instrument or voice. [Work supported by the American Physchological Association.]

Adults' perception of Western and Javanese musical scales

A cognitive/perceptual model of the processing of musical intervals was investigated by assessing the role of experience with Western music in perception of mistunings in both Western and non-Western scales. Musically inexperienced subjects, persons with limited background in music, and professional musicians heard seven-note major, minor, and Javanese pelog melodies. Each of the melodies contained successively the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, third, and first pitches of each scale, with the first and last pitches always D4 (293.66 Hz). The frequency relationships of the pelog scale were maintained within this framework. Each melody was altered in two ways. First, the top pitch (A4, 440 Hz in major and minor; 461.3 Hz in pelog) was raised along a continuum in ten 0.4% steps. Second, any pitch but the first was randomly selected for sharpening at each of ten 0.5 % steps. PEST was used to estimate the smallest degree of pitch raising on these continua that subjects could reliably perceive for each scale type. As predicted by the model, results indicate a strong relationship between musical training and perception of tuning alterations in the Javanese scale. Musically sophisticated subjects had equal perceptual thresholds across the three scale types. Musically naive subjects had a perceptual advantage for Western scales. Patterns of subject responding differed slightly when pitches were randomly selected for sharpening as opposed to when only the top pitch was raised. [Work supported by Am. Psychol. Assoc.]

Towards an Assessment of the Javanese Pelog Scale

But Professor Mantle Hood maintains that the Pelog tuning has an elastic quality, whereby intervals may be stretched or compressed, so that to speak of a fixed standard tuning is not in accord with the actual situation. Indeed Kunst himself (1949:251-2) states that gamelans of the Principalities are classed into different species both according to their absolute pitch and according to the mutual relation between the intervals. In the case of pitch the Javanese, he says, recognise three classes-low, medium and high: the distinction 'according to intervals chiefly in the interval . . . bemgulu. The question therefore arises whether Kunst's averages were too facile a summary of his tunings and whether the latter have not more to tell us about the nature of the Pelog scale. Our concern is not primarily with the pitch of the notes but with the interval-relationships of the notes in an octave. The stretching of the scale by tuning the octaves sharp is a separate issue which lies outside our immediate investigation. In order to gain a clear picture of comparative tunings, the charting of cents intervals is not the best way: it is far better to use what we have called 'Cumulative Cents' figures. In this method we select one note-and we shall choose the note Pelog-and call it 'O': we than progressively add the intervals below it and above it, and assign the totals to the respective notes. Thus Kunst's normalised Pelog in Cumulative Cents, when Pelog is 'O', will be: