A Comparison of Metal Percussion between Pák-kuán Pāi-chí and Gamelan

北管牌子与甘美朗中的铜器比较

||1:Music can mean different things in different cultures.||2:But although it is culturally specific, some of its building blocks are universal: melody, harmony, rhythm, the timbre produced by a variety of instruments and the distinctive style added by particular composers.||3:Almost all musical systems are based on scales spanning an octave—the note that sounds the same as the one you started off with, but at a higher or lower pitch.||4:Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher who lived around 500BC, is said to have discovered that notes that sound harmonious together have simple ratios between their frequencies: for example, one that is an octave higher than another has double the frequency.||5:The Pythagorean “diatonic” scale, still the basis of most Western music, is made up from seven notes.||6:But it is far from the only one.||7:Javanese gamelan uses two scales with different numbers of notes; North Indian music has 32 different scales.||8:Arnold Schoenberg devised a 12-tone scheme of atonal music about a century ago.

||1:音乐的意义因不同文化而异。||2:但是，即使音乐带有文化特殊性，其某些构建模块却具有普适性：节奏、和谐、韵律、不同乐器产生的音色和特别作曲家增添的迥异乐风。||3:几乎所有的音乐体系都是基于所跨越的八度音阶范围——这一音符的发音同开始时的完全一样，只是音高或高或低。||4:据说，公元前500年左右，希腊哲学家毕达哥拉斯已经发现了发音和谐的音符在频率之间成简单比例：例如，高一个八度的音符具有两倍的频率。||5:毕氏“全音阶”范围仍然是多数西方音乐的基石，它由七个音符组成。||6:但是，这远不是仅有的一个。||7:爪哇的加麦兰乐器使用两个音阶范围，每个音阶具有不同的音符数；北美印第安音乐具有32个不同音阶范围。||8:一个世纪以前，Arnold Schoenberg已经设计出一种无调音乐，由12音色组合而成。

But an ensemble of gamelan masters, who play inharmonic instruments like gongs, might beg to differ.

但是，对于经常演奏如铜锣这类非谐振乐器的加麦兰乐队而言，他们的喜好恐怕截然相反。

On Structure and Tonal Mode of Gamelan Scale

论甘美兰音阶的结构形态与调音模式