Cipher Notation

Cipher notation is a system of notating gamelan music. The system includes two types of information: pitch and rhythm. It also contains information on the colotomic structure of the piece.

Pitch

Javanese music uses two scales (collections of pitch relationships), a seven tone scale called pelog and a five tone scale called slendro. You can remember which of these is which by noticing the number of letters in the name of each scale. "Pelog" has five letters, and so is the name of the seven tone scale, "slendro" has seven letters and so it denotes the five tone scale. Gamelan Sari Pandhawa currently has only a slendro set, so we will confine our discussion to that scale.

The five notes in the slendro scale are assigned numbers: 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6. But wait, why aren't they just numbered 1 through 5? Well, that's a very good question. The short answer is that those numbers represent the closest approximation to members of the European scale system. If you numbered the members of a major scale 1 through 7, and then played 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 the result would be close to a slendro scale.

Octave transpositions are normally indicated by a dot above for the higher octave, or a dot below for the lower octave. Here we will use "~" to denote the dot below for the sake of convenience. We will also often use "i" to represent a 1 with a dot above. So the normal range of a saron using this system looks like this:


            6   1   2   3   5   6   i
            ~

Sometimes you will see a saron with an extended range:

                                    
                                    .   .   .
        5   6   1   2   3   5   6   1   2   3
        ~   ~

A saron in this configuration (or some variation of it) is called saron wayang.

Rhythm

The basic metric unit in gamelan music is called a gatra. A gatra is usually made up of 4 beats, which may be occupied by either a balungan note or a rest. The balungan note is represented by the number of the scale degree, as explained above. A rest is normally represented by a dot or a period. Let's look at an example called Lancaran Slebrak. Lancaran indicates the form that the piece is in, Slebrak is the title of this particular piece.

LANCARAN SLEBRAK


   {Gatra 1} {Gatra 2} {Gatra 3} {Gatra 4}
    . 3 . 5   . 3 . 5   . 3 . 5   . 6 . 1

    . 2 . 1   . 2 . 1   . 2 . 1   . 6 . 5

This is a relatively straight forward example, typical of the lancaran form. Each line of the piece consists of 4 gatras, each gatra being 4 beats long. In each gatra the first and third beats are silent, the balungan instruments playing only on the second and fourth beats.

If an instrument is playing a rhythm in which all or some of the durations are shorter than a beat, one must use lines above the notes to indicate this shorter duration. One line above will divide the beat into 2 equal parts, a double line will divide the beat into 4 equal parts. For those familiar with Western notation, this follows the same rules as adding beams to eighth and sixteenth notes. Here's an excerpt from the repertoire:

LADRANG DIRADA META (excerpt)

          __  ______          __  ______
    . . 2 35  6i.6i56   1 2 . 35  6i.6i56

          __  ______    __     
    1 2 . 35  6i.656i   656 1 2   . 3 5 6

Colotomics

The colotomic instruments; i.e., the gongs, kempul, kenong, kethuk, and kempyang; use a special notation from which one is expected to infer the actual part. In hand written notation, the notation may differ somewhat from what we have here, as well as from author to author. We have adopted certain conventions as being available on most standard word processors as well as being readily recognizable by gamelan musicians around the world.


Gong                            ( )

Kenong                          N

Kempul                          P

Kethuk                          +

Kempyang                        -  (sometimes "o")

Kenong and Kempul together      N/P  (non-standard but handy: % )

Here are a couple of examples. The first is called Srepegan and is the title of a class of pieces in a similar, but not neccesarily identical form that features the colotominc instruments.

SREPEGAN


    + N + % + N + %   + N + % + N + %   + N + % + N +  %
      3   2   3   2     5   3   5   3     2   3   2   (1)

The second example is a piece called Pankur, and it is in Ladrang form. Don't worry, we'll get to what all these forms later. For now, just try to notice and identify the colotmic instruments that the symbols refer to.

LADRANG PANKUR


    - + -     - + - N   - + - P   - + - N
    3 2 3 1   3 2 1 6   1 6 3 2   5 3 2 1

    - + - P   - + - N   - + - P   - + -  N
    3 5 3 2   6 5 3 2   5 3 2 1   3 2 1 (6)