Zach Froelich and Faculty Mentor: Jeremy Grimshaw, School of Music

This project began with a simple idea; what elements are important in representing
other culture’s music and do we overlook certain elements because of our cultural
biases? I wanted to see what would happen if I merged the quintessentially Western
instrument, the piano, with the Balinese gamelan. This had been explored by previous
composers who have made transcriptions of Balinese music for piano and have taken
Balinese musical forms and composed new pieces for western instruments but they had
ignored aspects of Balinese music that the Balinese consider extremely important.
Balinese instruments are very carefully tuned using a scale that is different from the
Western system and also incorporate the phenomena of beating into paired instruments
which creates a wavelike vibrato between the instruments. I felt that if Balinese music
was going to be recreated by western instruments, these elements which are so
important in Balinese music should be taken into account.

I decided to apply my experience as a piano tuner to retune a piano to match the tuning
of the Balinese gamelan. This began by making recordings of several of the instruments
in BYU’s gamelan ensemble so that I could analyze the tuning so I could compare it to
the piano’s. What I found was several notes of the scale were similar to the Western
scale system which didn’t have to move much while others were very different. The
space between notes on the piano is basically the same between any two consecutive
notes while in the Balinese system some notes were much closer or much further apart
from each other. By doing a spectral analysis of the gamelan instruments I was able to
see just how far apart each of these notes were.

I was then able to take these measurements and with the aid of an electronic tuning
device I tuned the piano to replicate the scale. I brought in another piano and applied
the same tuning to match the other one with a slight variation in pitch to match the
“wave” effect found in the gamelan instruments. I then used some prepared piano
techniques to replicate the sound of some of the other gamelan instruments including a
multi-toned drum and cymbals. I was then able to take a gamelan transcription and
arrange it for two pianos and four pianists.

An issue I ran into early on was that BYU’s instruments hadn’t been tuned in nearly 10
years which meant I wasn’t able to get an accurate representation of the scale so when
an opportunity to go to Bali came up I was ready and willing to hop on a plane and do
some field research. While there I was able to make sample recordings of several
ensembles including a gamelan which had just been tuned and others in a museum of
Balinese instruments. Having these recordings allowed me to compare the tunings on
the different instruments to have a clearer idea of the Balinese scale system. While
comparing the analysis of each of these instruments I found that the scale system was
much looser than I had originally thought.

In older court styles of gamelan the scale system was comprised of different
combinations of seven tones. In the 20th century on particular combination became the
preferred scale system which meant eliminating the notes that weren’t used. As this
became the norm, new instruments were made without the extra notes. What I found
was over time these new intervals started to change with a trend toward exaggerating
the difference between certain intervals. I think this was partially driven by the practice
gamelan competitions which are characterized by a masculine bravado including very
fast and intricate rhythms, flashy costumes, and displays of prowess. This style
impacted the tuning of the instruments where there was a preference towards harsher
sounding intervals where the closer intervals were made closer and the larger ones
further apart.

Armed with this information I set to work preparing the pianos based on that harsher
sound with the closer intervals because the piece I had transcribed was from that genre
of competition style music. The pianos I used were equipped with digital player piano
technology which allowed me to simulate a live performance. I was able to take the
digital transcription I had made of the piece of music and then play it as if it were being
played by performers. I was able to make a recording of this simulated performance and
ask the composer, Nyoman Windha, his opinion of the project. He liked the idea of
using the piano because he is very focused on the melody of any particular piece which
he considers the most important part when composing. The piano is particularly good at
emphasizing the melody this because it is designed to project the higher tones where
the melody is often placed without being covered up by lower notes. He also liked to
see how I had incorporated Balinese tuning into the performance.

The ultimate goal of the project was to better represent the Western performance of
Balinese music and the exchange I had with this Balinese composer was validating to
me because it felt like I had his stamp of approval on the project. I gained a lot of insight
into how we are impacted by tuning when we listen to any given piece and how different
cultures are able to work within their musical framework to evoke different experiences
for the audience through simply how their instruments are tuned.