Gamelan!!

I went to a gamelan practice last night and it was so awesome! This picture isn't from last nights rehearsal but from when I was in Indonesia. The gamelan is the traditional Indonesian orchestra, with a lot of percussive instruments in varying octaves, it has a bit of a trace-like sound, I really like it. Very brassy, but in a good way. So one of my professors told me to contact another professor in ethnomusicology, who gave me the contact info of Qehn, an American guy here in Eugene who loves Indonesian culture and does gamalan and wayang (the shadow puppets I love). This was the first time I've ever tried to play any of the instruments, and I was just thrown into it but it was a lot of fun. The sheet music looks nothing like western sheet music, but is fairly easy to follow. I was playing a serah (no idea if that's spelled right) which kind of looks like a xylophone, it has 7 aluminum keys, different in tone to western instruments. I'm sure theres a technical term for this, but I don't know it and I'm sure no one really cares anyway. The group was a very diverse mix of people, I'm very curious as to how they all came together- some older women, a woman about my age, and 3 guys that look like they're around 20 or so. I plan on going back next week, soon I will be a master gamelan member!