Pelog
Pelog is one of the two essential scales of
Gamelan music native to
Bali and
Java, in
Indonesia. The other is
slendro. The Pelog scale can be constructed in the same way as the Western
diatonic scale, as a chain of
perfect fourths, except with very wide, out-of-tune fourths, between 515 and 535
cents. This is at the very extreme of the range of
intervals that can be perceived as a fourth, and rapid
beating between the upper
harmonics (actually
inharmonic overtones in the case of the
metallophones which form the bulk of the
gamelan orchestra) contributes to the unique shimmering sound of the gamelan. The full pelog scale has seven distinct tones (a stack of 6 fourths), but normally a composition would be written in a 5-tone subset of the full scale. The seven tones of the pelog scale, in
circle-of-fourths order, are called "barang", "dada", "nem", "gulu", "lima", "bem", and "pelog" (yes, same as the name of the scale). Therefore, the tones of the scale in ascending order, with the two different kinds of step interval labeled L and S, are: gulu-S-dada-L-pelog-S-lima-S-nem-S-barang-L-bem-S-gulu. In this case S is about 110-150 cents and L is 250-300 cents.
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