New! Ableton Interview with Morgan and Bilawa here.
Album
Co-released in Berlin, Germany on February 14th, with Yes No Wave in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
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sample pack, Guide & Tuning Files
Thank you very much for checking out our project!
Below, you will find resources you can use in creating your own gamelanic compositions. We hope it serves as a starting point for future exploration of musical cosmologies beyond what you may know.
Sample Pack
Within the Sample Pack, you will find 7 instruments sampled from the Javanese gamelan of Rumah Budaya Indonesia – Berlin (RBI), selected by Morgan Sully and Bilawa Ade Respati:
- gong ageng
- kethuk & kempyang (slendro)
- saron (pelog)
- slenthem (pelog)
- slenthem (slendro)
- bonang barung (slendro)
- kempul gongs (pelog)
These instruments were chosen for their percussive, tonal qualities, resonance/dissonances, and ‘timbral potential’ in computer/electronic music contexts.
All instruments were performed by Bilawa over 5 days and meticulously recorded by Rabih Beaini at Morphine Raum in Berlin, using multiple microphones positioned at different angles to capture 24bit, 48.0kHz stereo samples of each instrument.
Sample Pack Guide
The Sample Pack Guide is a living document that outlines how the sample pack is organized, a very basic musicology, and some tips for working with the samples and understanding the relation of the instruments to each other.
The Latent Sonorities Sample Pack is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
RBI Ableton Live Pack
Created by Khyam Allami and Morgan Sully, this Ableton Live Pack introduces musicians to the unique tunings of RBI’s Javanese gamelan with custom MIDI Instruments based on Ableton’s Wavetable Instrument, alongside Drum Racks built using velocity-mapped samples from the instruments. Used together, one should be able to start understanding the relations of the notes within the slendro and pelog laras to each other in this particular gamelan.
Native Instruments Kontakt Library
The sample-based NI Kontakt Library was developed by Marcioz for use within the Native Instruments environment.
Tuning Files (.scl)
The tuning files (in Scala) and the RBI Tuning Chart will be of interest to not just musicians, but any researcher interested in experimenting with tonal relationships beyond the Anglo-European canon. The chart also contains links to the browser-based audio tool Leimma to immediately start hearing the relationships of the notes to each other in RBI’s Javanese gamelan, now transmutable to gamelanic contexts beyond the physical instruments.
Interviews
Here, you can download our PDF and learn more about the project, get historical background on the instruments, and read interviews (led by sonic researcher Emma Lo) with stewards, artists, and researchers involved in the project.
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In the meantime, please play with these resources – and share what you come up with!
👋🏽 If you have questions, want to say hello, or share your creations, please write to info at latentsonorities dot org!👋🏽
Additional Resources
Below you’ll find some additional resources related to the project, tuning, and gamelan.
RBI Berlin Javanese Gamêlan Agêng Tumbuk Nêm Tuning Chart: tuning chart of RBI’s instruments selected for this project along with cent values, Hz, and solmization.
Latent Sonorities Youtube Playlist
Just a small selection from Morgan and friends.
SOFTWARE
Apotome: A browser-based generative music environment based on octave-repeating microtonal tuning systems and their subsets (scales/modes).
Microtuner by Ableton: Ableton Live MIDI effect for reading Scala files inthe Ableton Live environment.
MTS-ESP Mini: Scala interpreter by ODDsound for any DAW
Leimma: a transcultural browser-based tool for exploring tuning systems from different cultures with features to build your own
List of Microtonal Software Plugins
The .scl files developed for Latent Sonorities can be used in many of the paid and free plugins in this list.
Massive, massive resource of Scala files for use in your own compositions.
HARDWARE
Stand-alone MIDI hardware that converts incoming MIDI to uploaded microtonal scales.
Microtonal hardware mod for the Roland SH101. Get pelog and slendro scales in your electro tracks!
Modular Eurorack multi-tool for loading .scl files into your modular hardware.
Eurorack module that supports uploading .scl files (among many other features)
reading & theory
INTRODUCTION, THEORY, AND ANALYSIS: JAVANESE GAMELAN
This is one of the core references we used in the development of this project. It’s a great (and easy) primer for anyone interested in Javanese gamelan theory.
Sean Hayward’s Online Javanese Gamelan Course
Sean generously created this University of California, Los Angeles course (in English) after studying with Pak Djoko Waluyo in Jogjyakarta.
Apotome – the software that has found a home in different communities of artists working beyond Anglo-European musicologies – was born from this dissertation.
Inherent Possibilities: Contemplation on audio samples and Karawitan from Latent Sonorities
Presentation from Bilawa Respati on the expression of karawitan, and approaching a better understanding of Laras, Swarantara, Pathet and Embat through the samples and analysis of the materials of Latent Sonorities.
Intercultural Transfer and Balinese Gamelan Preservation
A research paper outlining different modes of cultural transfer and preservation with explicit attention to power dynamics and multi-way flows of influence. Fantastic read from Latent Sonorities Embedded Researcher, Emma Lo.
A fantastic essay on colonization and it’s effects in electronic music systems, how it shapes music production as well as cultures of inertia from both music software communities and developers for those communities.