Balinese Gamelan: Instruments, Ensembles and Sound Explained

Gamelan musicians at a street temple concert in Ubud, October 2003. Photo: Ken Eckert, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

What Is Balinese Gamelan? A Percussion Orchestra Tuned as One Set

Balinese gamelan accompanies ceremony and dance across the island, yet search for it and the first page is a mix of Wikipedia, a travel guide, a school lesson and a resort blog. We carry paintings of village processions and ceremonies, and one of them shows gamelan players, so we wanted one page that connects the music to the art, with every claim tied to a named source.

Wikipedia’s Gamelan entry defines gamelan as the traditional ensemble music of the Javanese, Sundanese and Balinese peoples of Indonesia, made up mostly of percussion instruments. The word comes from a Javanese root meaning to strike with a mallet. Metallophones, which are struck with mallets, are among the most common instruments. The rest of the family includes gongs, drums such as the kendang, xylophones, bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings, and voices.

UNESCO’s 2021 inscription describes the instruments as mainly ornate, hand-forged metal percussion. It says the music follows precise rules for tuning, instrument layout and rhythmic patterns, and that the melody is played by several instruments at once, often in interlocking parts that form a single rhythm. Practitioners include people of all genders and ages: vocalists, instrumentalists, instrument makers and tuners. The music is heard in religious rituals, ceremonies, traditional theatre, festivals and concerts.

One more point from Wikipedia explains why a gamelan is treated as a set. Each ensemble’s tuning is distinct, so two gamelans tuned to the same notes can still sound different from one another.

The sacred stories that gamelan accompanies on stage and in the puppet theatre are the same ones painters work from, and our guide to Balinese mythology painting maps them.

Balinese Gamelan vs Javanese Gamelan: Same Family, Different Temperament

Wikipedia describes Javanese gamelan as soft and slow in tone, Sundanese gamelan as dominated by flutes and mellow, and Balinese gamelan as strong and dynamic, with fast rhythms. That contrast is the quickest way to tell the two apart by ear. Wikipedia adds that Javanese gamelan uses two tuning systems, slendro with five notes per octave and pelog with seven, and that a full set holds instruments in both but traditionally plays only one at a time.

We do not go further into Balinese tuning here. The sources we could check were not specific enough for us to describe the Balinese scales with confidence, and we would rather leave that to musicians and ethnomusicologists than guess.

Ombak and Kotekan: How the Shimmer and the Speed Are Made

Two features give Balinese gamelan its recognizable sound, and both come from how the instruments are built and shared out between players.

A Balinese gamelan metallophone, a row of metal keys over a carved and gilded frame, labelled “Gangse or Pemade” on Wikimedia Commons. Photo: Culturehistory, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Ombak. Wikipedia’s Balinese gamelan entry says instruments are built in pairs tuned slightly apart, which produces interference beats called ombak, meaning wave. One instrument of each pair is tuned a little higher, described as the inhale, and the other a little lower, the exhale. The entry says this beating gives the ensemble its shimmering sound and, in ritual, is said to evoke a sense of a god’s presence or a meditative state. The gong kebyar entry describes the same pairing as male and female, with the female instrument tuned lower.

Kotekan. In the gong kebyar entry, kotekan means complex, complementary melodic and rhythmic patterns. Each pair of gangsa players splits into polos, which mostly plays on the beat, and sangsih, which mostly plays off the beat. Together they produce rapid, virtuosic patterns, so the fast line is made by two players, not one. UNESCO’s description of interlocking parts that form a single rhythm points at the same idea.

Gamelan Instruments in Bali: Who Plays What in a Gong Kebyar

We use the gong kebyar as the map of the instrument family because Wikipedia’s entry on it lists the parts in detail. It lists the following.

Source: Wikipedia’s Gong kebyar entry. Player numbers and layouts vary between groups, and we only list what we could check.

Ceng ceng players in a gong kebyar orchestra in Ubud, 2004, according to the Commons description. Photo: User:Scott, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.

The drum has a job that is easy to miss. Wikipedia’s Gamelan entry says the kendang keeps the beat and signals transitions between sections.

The Balinese Gamelan Ensembles, From Sacred Selonding to Gong Kebyar

Bali has many kinds of gamelan, not one. Wikipedia groups them by age into wayah, the older types, madya, from roughly the 16th to the 19th century, and anyar, the 20th century.

Source: Wikipedia’s Balinese gamelan et Gamelan entries, with the ogoh-ogoh detail from our own guide. The lists are long, and we show only part of each.

A gamelan orchestra giving a Gamelan Gong Gede performance for the Bali Hotel in Denpasar, dated by the Tropenmuseum catalogue to between 1900 and 1940. Photographer unknown. Photo: Wereldmuseum Amsterdam (formerly Tropenmuseum), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Two details from the same Wikipedia entry show how local the music is. Ensembles are kept in a balé, an open-sided pavilion, so the sound carries into the community, and ownership by the banjar, the neighborhood association, is common. A sekaha, the gamelan group, is led by one instructor who helps it develop new pieces, often leaving room for improvisation. Pieces can change over time, except for the most sacred ones.

Gong Kebyar: The Style That Burst Open in 1915

Gong kebyar is the ensemble in this guide with a dated first public performance. Wikipedia says it was first documented in North Bali in the early 1900s, and that its first public performance was in December 1915 at a gamelan competition in Jagaraga. The entry does not name one creator. It notes that the Dutch sponsored island-wide competitions until Japanese forces ended their rule in World War II.

The name explains the sound. Kebyar means to flare up or burst open, which refers to the style’s sudden shifts in tempo and dynamics. Wikipedia says its explosive, mostly unmetered openings derive from kebyar legong of Buleleng, North Bali, and that early new compositions were loosely constructed and rhapsodic before becoming more standardized through the 20th century.

Dance is part of the kebyar story too. Wikipedia mentions Kebyar Duduk and Kebyar Trompong as dance pieces in which a dancer plays the trompong. Our guide to Balinese dancer wood carving adds that Kebyar Duduk was first performed in 1925 by I Ketut Marya, known as I Mario, and that its seated or crouched posture grew out of performing inside a tightly packed gamelan. Wikipedia’s source for kebyar’s openings, kebyar legong of Buleleng, shares a name with the classical dance in our legong dance guide, though we have not checked how closely the two are related.

Where Gamelan Gongs Come From: The Pande Gong of Tihingan

NOW! Bali’s 8 November 2023 feature on Tihingan village, written by Edward Speirs, describes how gongs are forged there. A metal disc about 20 cm across is heated in a fire and hammered on a flat stone while being turned, again and again, until it grows to roughly 55 cm. Stones set at angles under the disc help raise the gong’s walls, and mallets and a grinder handle the final smoothing. A group of about ten workers can finish one gong in roughly 3 to 4 hours.

Two specialists share the work. The pengrajin shapes the instrument by eye, and the tukang laras, the tuning expert, tunes each instrument or key by ear. The article says the smith clan, called pande, is said to descend from the lowest caste yet earned special status because its metalworking skills were considered almost magical. Tihingan’s craftsmen are known as pande gong, and the village’s gong-making tradition is said to date to the 16th century and to be linked to the Gelgel Kingdom.

On the metal itself, the sources we read do not agree. Wikipedia says the best gamelan bronze is about ten parts copper to three parts tin, while the Tihingan article describes bronze or brass made with a set ratio of copper, zinc and lead. We would treat any single recipe with care.

Tihingan is in Klungkung, the same regency as the painting village covered in our Kamasan painting guide. Working metal carries its own holy day: our Tumpek Landep guide explains that a blacksmith’s own equipment is traditionally blessed on that day. Cast bronze figures use a different method, the lost-wax technique, which we cover in our Bali bronze statue guide.

Gamelan in Ceremony: Blessings, Temple Rites and Processions

Gamelan is part of ceremony, not only a soundtrack to it. Wikipedia’s Balinese gamelan entry says gong gede is used in temple ceremonies, gender is used in life-cycle ceremonies, and gamelan is used in ngaben death-ceremony processions.

The instruments themselves are honored. Our Tumpek Wayang guide describes the gender wayang, the small ensemble that traditionally accompanies a wayang kulit performance, being honored alongside the puppets, and a gamelan set touched with holy water before it is played again. That makes the music part of the same arts calendar as Kamasan painting and carving.

For the festive side, our guide says the parade of an ogoh-ogoh statue before Nyepi moves with torches and music alongside, often a baleganjur percussion ensemble.

Gamelan and Dance: The Orchestra a Dancer Answers

In Balinese dance, the music and the body are tied together. Wikipedia’s Balinese dance entry says articulation of the face and eyes is coordinated with the layered percussive sounds of the gamelan.

Several dances we cover are tied to gamelan. Legong is danced to gamelan by two dancers and a condong, according to our guide. Wikipedia’s list of Balinese ensembles includes bebarongan and batel barong, names that point to the Barong dance. The exception is kecak, where, per our guide, Walter Spies suggested a chanting chorus in place of a gamelan.

The stories those dances act out are the same ones painters draw on, which is the subject of our Balinese mythology painting guide.

What to Listen For in Balinese Gamelan

We are not performers, so this is a short list built only from the sources above. If you are listening to a recording or a live ensemble, these are four things the sources let you notice.

What We Know and What We Defer On

We are an art gallery in Seminyak, not a music school, a gamelan workshop or a ticket desk. What we write here comes from the sources named in this post and from our own guides and paintings. We do not list venues, rehearsal times or ticket prices, because we could not verify them and they change. On tuning, repertoire and the ritual use of the instruments, we defer to the musicians, makers and teachers who carry the tradition. If you spot something we should correct, tell us and we will fix it.

Paintings Where the Gamelan Plays

We do not sell gamelan instruments, so the closest we come is paintings of the occasions where they are played. The Rhythm of the Village Procession Painting is listed as an original artwork in the traditional Ubud style, acrylic on cotton canvas, 85 × 135 cm, at Rp12,500,000. The listing describes a lively ceremonial procession with village residents in ceremonial attire, traditional gamelan players and sacred regalia moving past a red-brick temple gateway. The listing does not name the painter, so we do not either.

The Rhythm of the Village Procession Painting, original acrylic on cotton canvas, 85 × 135 cm, shown in a light wood frame, at Arts of Bali.

Details are from the product listings, checked on 21 October 2026. Each is a single original piece, so price and availability can change. For more on how ceremony and procession scenes are painted, see our guide to Bali temple ceremony painting, our guide to Ubud style painting, and the wider tradition in our Balinese mythology painting hub.

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