#madenda

[atrahasis]

Finally found the tunings for the madenda and degung scales.

[atrahasis]

Disclaimer: Am a music noob. Use of incorrect terminology is expected here.

In the same way that minor keys sound sad as opposed to the major keys in Western music, there seems to be a sad or haunting style of Gamelan music as opposed to the more happy style. And it’s my favorite of the Gamelan styles.

I figure that this style is tied to a particular music scale. Searching online suggests 2 scales as being the predominant Gamelan scales, pelog and slendro. However these seem to sound more like the happy style. There are more uncommon Gamelan scales, and it’s possible the one i’m looking for is the madenda scale.

Searching for the term “madenda” in the Google search bar gives scant results, with few of them associating the word with a musical scale. The first search result is an article on the music scale in the Indonesian language, which suggests the scale’s relative nicheness as opposed to the pelog and the slendro.

Which is weird because I seem to recall the sad/haunting/dark style of Gamelan to be rather common in incidental music.   

Either way, there’s a Gamelan ensemble piece called Sekar Jepun. Does anyone-in-the-know know if it is in fact in the madenda scale?

Here’s a few videos that come up when searching madenda on Youtube, for reference.

[demdom-imik]

played gamelan with my friends at Pementasan Mandiri Sawindu on 7 June 2014 in Basketball court, Bale Santika, Universitas Padjadjaran, Jatinangor, Sumedang.