Virtual Gamelan

Just intonation: A tuning system having intervals that are acoustically pure; all intervals are represented by ratios of whole numbers. Lydia Ayers composes with unlimited just intonation in Csound and with 75-tone Indian/Partch scale on the "Woodstock Gamelan," a tubular percussion instrument built to her specifications by Woodstock Percussion. She has modeled the Woodstock Gamelan and other gamelan instruments using Csound, and authored Cooking with Csound: Woodwind and Brass Recipes, a CD-ROM package which gives wavetable synthesis design for wind instruments. The music on this CD is inspired by the works of Harry Partch and Lou Harrison, the antics of the family cats, and experiences in Indonesia, such as awareness of the proximity of Merapi, Java's most active volcano, and listening to gamelan and kecak performances in Bali. Lydia Ayers has visited Java and Bali several times, where she met with such artists as I Wayan Dibia and Made Wiratini and made sample recordings of the STSI gamelan with their assistance. She has played gamelan at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and at Hong Kong University, and extensively researched microtonal tuning systems. She has worked with extended vocal and woodwind techniques, including quarter tones, multiphonics and other unusual flute timbres. She has used algorithims to solve tuning and compositional problems, and is creating Indonesian, Native American, Australian and Chinese computer instrument designs.