Meet my Hypnotic Gamelan Saron

Growing up in Malaysia, I was drawn to the gamelan. The gamelan is my favorite traditional instrument. I love the mesmerizing and hypnotic sound. 

Now that making music is my career, I love incorporating the gamelan into my songs. So I wanted people to see what they were hearing. What is the gamelan saron? What are they hearing? I wanted them to know and see what the gamelan is. Maybe even fall in love with this beautiful and mesmerizing instrument, just as I have. 

It was a dream come true when I had a custom gamelan saron made for me some time ago. It truly was a labor of love. This is a photo of my custom-built chromatic gamelan saron.

It was a long, drawn-out process. It took a while to find a builder. Once I found one, communication with him was difficult because of his remote location. The next challenge was shipping this heavy instrument to Malaysia. It took forever to arrive from Indonesia.

Before I received my gamelan saron, I used gamelan music samples rather than live gamelan instruments because of the challenges of matching the different tunings and modes with western music. This made it very challenging for me to include gamelan into my music.

I had to develop a solution because I had this vision of fusing traditional instruments in pop music, creating a world of East meets West, a representation of this hybrid and unity of unity, and East met West through music and did not want to compromise it. Since I love the sound of the gamelan, the gamelan saron was central to making this vision come true. 

Eventually, my chromatic gamelan saron finally arrived at my home in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The next step was challenging too. I had to pack and transport this instrument halfway across the world to another country, all the way from Malaysia to the USA, and finally to Los Angeles. Talk about an East meets West journey!

My musical East meets West vision was finally coming true through the gift of this unique hybrid instrument. I was thrilled and grateful to be able to play, record, and include my chromatic gamelan saron into my song "You Are My Land." I had to keep pinching myself in the studio to remind myself that this was real.

It took a long time to fulfill this vision, despite what many people said (I've been called crazy many times during this journey). There were so many challenges that came my way. I often felt like giving up. In the end, I feel that it was all worth it.

I hope you enjoy listening to my chromatic gamelan saron in 'You Are My Land,' and I hope you will fall in love with this beautiful instrument, just as I have. I'm looking forward to sharing more of this beautiful instrument with you in my upcoming tracks. 

"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… The ones who see things differently – they're not fond of rules. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the one thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things… Because the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. Think different." - Steve Jobs.