Today we had the opportunity to try practicing both pieces with the musicians playing the music live. It made such a difference. We were able to hear and recognize cues for movements in the music that I sure couldn’t hear before with the recorded pieces. Also I think the musicians were really excited because the piece went from 8 minutes to 6 so we were moving very quickly.
During the second half of the practice time, we had the chance to switch with the musicians. They went off to the pondok to learn one of the dance pieces while we stayed and tried our hands at the instruments. There are a couple of instruments in the gamelan, ugal, gangsa, flute, drums, and gongs to name a few. They had us on the smaller gangsas, which are all tuned to different pitches. It was incredibly difficult!!!!! First off, not only do you have to follow the rhythm with the mallet, but you also need to follow whatever note you hit with your mallet (right hand) with the left hand to quite the previous note! Sure, you’re thinking, easy!! Not for me, not for someone with limited hand-eye coordination let alone trying to following the previous note with my left hand…right…. that was a very difficult practice.
Also that night, Ethan and I went to karaoke at Flava to meet up with Estee and some of her friends. It was really early so most of the fun people hadn’t shown yet, and we had the restaurant all to ourselves. It was alot of fun and it was great to meet people outside of the group. There’s a really colourful and diverse population in Ubud and I’m really excited to hopefully meet more people.
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