Gamelan construction of musical instruments, as well as scheduling performances at the court. In the palaces of Java the oldest known ensembles, Gamelan "Munggang" and "Gamelan Kodok Ngorek", are apparently from the 12th century. These formed the basis of a "loud style" of music. In contrast, a "soft style" developed out of the "kemanak" tradition and is related to the traditions of singing Javanese poetry, in a manner often believed to be similar to the chorus that accompanies the modern "bedhaya" dance. In the 17th century, these loud and soft styles mixed, and to a large extent the variety of modern
Gamelan Bali, remarked, "Deviations in what is considered the same scale are so large that one might with reason state that there are as many scales as there are gamelans." This view is contested, however, by some teachers of gamelan, and there have been efforts to combine multiple ensembles and tuning structures into one gamelan to ease transportation at festival time. One such ensemble is gamelan "Manikasanti", which can play the repertoire of many different ensembles. Balinese gamelan instruments are built in pairs that are tuned slightly apart to produce interference beats, ideally at a consistent speed for all pairs of