What is meant by Gamelan? Briefly describe its artistic characteristics

Gamelan: (Gamelan) is one of the oldest national musical instruments in Indonesia, and the Gamelan ensemble in Bali and Java is the most famous. The main instruments include the steel violin, xylophone, drums, gongs, bamboo flutes, plucked strings and stringed instruments, and some of the pieces can also be added to the singer. Gamelan is the name of the whole group, "gamels" (gamel) in Indonesian is interpreted as percussion, and the end of the word "lan" (-an) is used to indicate a noun, which together means percussion. In addition to being the court and religious music of Indonesia, Gamelan was also a major influence on Western music in the twentieth century.

Artistic Characteristics: Gamelan is a polyphonic music made up of an ensemble of several instruments with the addition of human voices. It is neither unison nor European in harmony and counterpoint. Its musical fabric is complex and intertwined, and it is performed with a certain degree of improvisation, i.e. on the basis of the core melody. Gamelan music is mostly played in two pentatonic scales, chromatic and chromatic-free, but its meter is different from the twelve equal temperament and somewhat closer to the five equal temperament, which is difficult to get used to at first hearing. When playing Gamelan, you have to follow the norms of the center tone, backbone tone, specific range, melodic pattern and termination of the tuning called "padet". It is similar to the Indian raga, and different padates are used to express different moods. Gamelan music is generally considered to be characterized by "musical thinking" and "polyphonic layering", and its musical motifs are often not long and simple. However, in the musical thinking, the development of different instruments, resulting in polyphonic layering of musical characteristics, and the development of Western music can be said to be different from the development of the way interesting.