So I fit a kulintangan scale into equal temperament.
No, it’s not in a major pentatonic scale. I have no idea why Bornean music always depends on the major pentatonic scale in modern ethnic music. OK, rant aside, basically I found a paper that talks about how zinc kulintangans are made. Oh also these are kulintangans:
Not zinc but whatever.
Anyway, close to the end of the paper were frequencies of the kulintangan set being studied, from highest to lowest (in Hz):
808, 676, 608, 500, 460, 408, 338, 305, 277
Out of curiosity, I decided to pull out this handy tool and convert the frequencies to their closest equivalents on the equal temperament scale (the previous set of numbers but in reverse):
C#4 D#4 E4 G#4 A#4 B4 D#5 E5 G#5
I noticed the D# E G# pattern and assumed C#4 and B4 must refer to the same, uh, note? So I averaged them to a C. C4, C5. There. Now the main scale should look a little bit like this:
C D# E G# A#
which sounds... pretty wonky, really. Then I switched the first note of the scale around and found a nice little scale (to me, at least):
G# A# C D# E
Better. (Kinda.)
