Short version recorded 12/09/2011 to play in a seminar. This piece was originally developed for the Placard Headphone Festival in Sheffield earlier this year and is meant to be heard through headphones…the quality isn’t so great on here (bad compression!) and I will try to upload a better version to Soundcloud though I will probably end up recording another performance.

It’s based around a Max/MSP patch, which is playing through transducers attached to a Javanese Kempyang/Kethuk and some other gongs. These are picked up with contact mics and a cheap stereo mic in the centre, and mixed with an analog mixer, eq, reverb and a little bit of feedback.

The Max patch itself goes through a couple of stages – a high frequency pulse, which is gradually slowed down..later it forms the basis for the interpretation of a traditional Javanese form, a ladrang.

The tuning here is based on the resonance of the instruments – the sine-type tones are played through the gongs, with a few additional deep tones and “kenong” played directly through the mixer.