VIRTUAL GAMELAN

Senior High School students 1 Prembun, Kebumen district, no longer limited to computer tools for typing or accessing social networking sites. Laptop has transformed into a set of gamelan instruments. With this new technology, the students do not fuss if performed outside the city. For example when appearing on the House Education Quality Assurance Agency (LPMP) in Central Java city of Semarang, Sunday (13/12). They just bring a laptop with a nine-unit computer program called "Virtual Gamelan" is already embedded in it. Each laptop is used to play one type of musical instrument. Dwi Wibowo (20), 1 Prembun high school students, served bonang play. His friends play a kind of different instruments. Like a musical group, they came up with harmony produces a sound similar to the original gamelan. "At first hard to play the gamelan in this way," said Dwi. To play this virtual gamelan, each student plays a musical instrument with a computer mouse pressed. On each laptop screen, visible form of musical instrument they played. To hit the instrument, they should direct it to use a computer mouse. In the performance that night, they played three pieces of Java, namely "Praon", "Ojo Dipleroki", and "Mayang Sewu". There are four 1 Prembun high school student who served as sindhen or singer. While four other students portray characters clown servants to refresh their appearance. Innovative technology created art teacher at Senior High School 1 Prembun, Joko Triyono, was able to make pupils more love gamelan. "Before you know with this new equipment, I did not like the gamelan," said Dwi. For Dwi, how to play a virtual gamelan is quite pleasant. Gamelan played by the computer is like playing a computer game. "I'm quick like a virtual gamelan since before I was addicted to playing computer games," said Dwi.Equipment practice

Seeing the interest of the students, Joko Triyono program also plans to release a "Virtual Gamelan" in 2010. Thus, the program created in 2006 can be used by other students to practice gamelan. "A set of gamelan instruments is quite expensive and heavy. This caused many schools can not practice gamelan," said Joko. Itupun computer program can also be easily "planted" in a computer because of its size is very small, which is about 3 mega bytes. With the small size, the program can be stored in a flash disk. Joko admitted there are two types of gamelan musical instruments can not be included in the program, which is siter and fiddle. The reason, Joko has not found a way to play the instrument with a computer mouse. (Herpin Dewanto)