Bali’s beating gong

At the heart of the Balinese percussive orchestra known as a gamelan is the large gong called the gong ageng wadon. It features a large, protruding dome or boss in the middle; when the boss is struck with a padded mallet, the gong produces a pronounced acoustic beating or ombak (meaning “wave”), as can be heard in this sound file . Using acoustical and vibrometric analyses, David Krueger and his colleagues at Brigham Young University have studied the sources of the ombak. Although some beating was found to come from asymmetric vibration modes with closely spaced frequencies, those appear to contribute mostly to the gong’s timbre. The more significant contribution arises from the gong ageng wadon’s nonlinear structural response. The gong’s two dominant vibration modes, both axially symmetric, have nearly a 2:1 frequency ratio. That relationship gives the gong its perceived pitch, but the ratio isn’t exact. So when the gong is struck, causing displacements large enough to produce overtones, the fundamental generates harmonics and interacts with the second axisymmetric mode to yield sum and difference frequencies. The resulting sound spectrum features strong peaks of similar amplitudes that are spaced only a few hertz apart and give rise to the distinctive sound of ombak. (D. W. Krueger, K. L. Gee, J. Grimshaw, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 128, EL8, 2010 .)—Richard J. Fitzgerald