Gamelan Son of Lion Gamelan Son of Lion Gamelan Son of Lion (GSOL) is a new-music American gamelan ensemble based in New York City. The group was founded in 1976 by Barbara Benary (who constructed most of the instruments), Philip Corner, and Daniel Goode. It is a composers' collective as well as repertory ensemble. Current composers in the group in addition to the co-founders are: David Demnitz, Laura Liben, Jody Kruskal, Lisa Karrer, Marnen Laibow-Koser, Jody Diamond, and David Simons. Gamelan Son of Lion's keyed instruments have bars constructed of iron, in the Javanese style. The group uses both the "pelog" and "slendro" tuning
Gamelan interference beats are meant to give the listener a feeling of a god's presence or a stepping stone to a meditative state. The scale roughly approximates that of the phrygian mode of the Western major scale (E-E on the white keys of the piano), with the notes EFGBC corresponding to the note positions 12356 in the "slendro" scale used by most gamelan. As well as the non-western octave and the use of beats, Javanese gamelan uses a combination of tempo and density known as "Irama", relating how many beats on the "saron panerus" instrument there are to notes in the