I'mfeatured in Brazilian mag. Qualidade de Vida

[sgs4u]

Greg, that's just COOL man. Congratulations. Kinda like being on the cover of the Rolling Stone. Hey, I just realized a buddy in Guam asked about this picture, and you might know lots about it.It's a bamboo xylophone, he asked this... Quote:anyone see any logic here? this is a Balinese instrument. I don't know if it is made for tourists, or if they use it in gamelan music.... but it sure has a flavor...

[gongchime]

I've had two of those. They're not only for tourists. Farmers play them on breaks in the rice fields and keep them in a straw hut in the middle of the fields. They have a standard repertoire when played in the hotels and restaurants. I've made several transcriptions. I've arrived at the logic but first here was the thought process that went into looking at these.Usually they're tuned to the Slendro scale CDFGA (roughly) which would be 5 equal steps to an octave but as you can see those are some dried out cracked bamboo tubes. So the written tuning could reflect the current state of affairs where tubes have gone out of tune, and not the way it was built. However it could also have a pelog tuning which would be similar to CEFGBC but tuned to a 9 equal division of the octave of which only 7 or even only 5 are used. Of course it could be some other transposition. But after looking at the tuning, it's not pelog. There's no instance of Do going to Mi. I even tried skipping tubes to get the major third between Do and Mi but Mi should be followed by a wholestep to Fa so no cigar since that never happens.Another possibility would be some variation of CEFGBbC but thats VERY rare and anyway doesn't match. It's also possible the Indonesian person writing the notes on the tubes had absolutely no idea what he was doing which is a distinct possibility. The only other thing I can think of is that the F# really is enharmonic with some kind of microtonal G. And same with the C# which would be relating to some kind of crazy D. As you can see in the upper octave there's a D and not a C#. So if we say the lower octave goes F G A C D where F# is a microtonal G, then it could be a slendro scale but then F doesn't repeat in the upper octave which makes me think the E could be a mistake since it's close to F. The microtonal, 5 equally tuned pentatonic scale can allow relatively wide discrepancies like that although the octave is usually stretched not compressed but that one may just be out of tune.Since they're usually in Slendro I think that is the answer. It should read FGACDFGACDF since the A is also only a half step from the Bb. So I suspect someone trying to write the tuning on the bars was listening to a note between F# and G and also a note between Bb and A. Then tossed a coin as which name to give them. Anyway, it's authentic to be sure but (shameless self promotion) I've got much better one's for sale at www.GardenOfAsianArts.com Greg

[nomiyah]

Cool. Great coverage!!!

[davewalton]

Another thing I missed somehow.Belated congratulations on this! Very cool. Dave

[gongchime]

Since the magazine came out I've sold $100 worth of CDs in about 2 weeks. Promotion is good and sometimes even effective. Woohoo.

[allends]

Dec 23, 2008, 8:13pm, gongchime wrote:Since the magazine came out I've sold $100 worth of CDs in about 2 weeks. Promotion is good and sometimes even effective. Woohoo.Do you have an update on your sales, Greg?Allen

[silvercord]

Just read this for the 1st time~ big congrats, Greg!!!!