Skip to main content

Gamelan and slide brass

I've been chatting with gamelan musician John Jacobs about a piece he is planning to bring to the Poolewe Gamelan Retreat in Septemer. John is also a trumpet player, and tells me that he has for many years been curious about the possibility of using the microtonal affordances of the slide trumpet with gamelan.

Within the Javanese tradition there are existing practices that seek to exploit fine differences in intonation. No two gamelan sets are tuned exactly alike, and players are accustomed to playing the ‘same’ piece using what would to Western ears sound like a completely different collection of musical frequencies. It is also the case that singers and rebab players will make fine adjustements to pitch in response to the pathet (mode) of the music, and not necessarily follow the pitch of the instruments exactly.

Broadening this out, I've been thinking of creating some work or works of my own that contrast two different kinds of musical material:

Fixed discrete pitches that decay (not necessarily equal tempered)​

  • gamelan
  • detuned piano, guitar, harp
  • ‘out-of-tune’ instruments
  • pitched digital samples

Continuously variable sustatined pitch​

  • slide brass (trombone, slide trumpet)
  • slide whistle (?!)
  • bowed strings, rebab (Javanese spike fiddle)
  • human voice
  • digital/analog oscillators

As a first step, I have some ideas for a piece to try out at the residency, with John on slide trumpet, me on trombone, plus the gamelan.