Something I’ve been developing in Indonesia is a concept of how music evolves. We’re all familiar with the biological concept of evolution: organisms have random traits introduced into generations, and the traits which stick end up becoming more and more common, resulting in a species that is more successful in its environment. The story I […]
This week, I’ve been continuing to practice kendang, which is the drum that leads a gamelan ensemble. It’s quite difficult to get the right procession of sounds on it, so my teacher encourages me to just practice getting the sounds out first: like the Karate Kid, I need to have those basics down pat, and […]
This week, I had the pleasure of joining in a Hindu ceremony in my local village in Bali. It was meant to start at 3pm, at 3pm I went out of my house and Grandma (not my Grandma, but she’s the Grandma of the homestay I live in and sure acts very grandmotherly towards me, […]
The National Concert Hall (NCH) in Dublin is a very imposing building. It is a massive stone structure which would not be out of place as a Monarchial residence. It reminds me of the majesty of some buildings in places like Paris or London: buildings fit for Kings and Queens. Wikipedia tells me that it […]
Out of all the cities I visited on my Europe trip, Paris was the only one that I had visited before (other than London, but I barely spent any time there at all). I was heading there specifically because of a gamelan that I’d found when searching up groups to go and visit – gamelan […]
I always thought the UK was a train country. By that, I mean you always hear about how good the trains are there, how easy they are to take, and how connected the country is. I also think the Victorian steam era of the UK heavily features the development of its rail network, so it’s […]
The past two weeks I’ve had the pleasure of taking part in a marimba ensemble workshop. These marimbas aren’t orchestral marimbas, though, which I have some very minor experience playing. These marimbas are Zimbabwean: handcrafted and in four different ranges (soprano, alto, tenor, bass). It was a lot of fun to learn an unfamiliar (ie […]
Before I had travelled to Bali, I played in an Balinese gamelan (traditional ensemble) in Canberra. Friends there often expressed a sense of regret or sadness about the current state of Bali. “It used to be a beautiful, natural island,” they would say, “but now it has become overrun with resorts and tourists”. They would […]
Hi everyone, I’ve been very sick this week unfortunately so only a very short blog post from me. Unfortunately I came down with some kind of illness on Monday and so I spent most of this week resting up. I was even worse yesterday but once again I seem on the mend (though I recall […]
I’ve been in Bali for about ten days now. It is actually my first time being in the country of Indonesia – before being involved with gamelan (the traditional music commonly found in Java and Bali), I had no experience with Indonesia at all. I’ve slowly been playing catch-up as a result, now being about […]