"Ketuk" redirects here, for the village in Azerbaijan, see Ağgədik.

The kempyang and ketuk are two instruments in the gamelan

Gamelan

A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....

, generally played by the same player, and sometimes played by the same player as the kenong

Kenong

The kenong is one of the instruments used in the Indonesian gamelan. It is technically a kind of gong, but is placed on its side and is roughly as tall as it is wide. It thus is similar to the bonang, kempyang and ketuk, which are also cradled gongs. Kenongs are generally much larger than any of...

. They are important beat-keepers in the colotomic structure of the gamelan. Depending on the structure, they play different, repeating patterns every gongan. Not all structures use the kempyang, but the kempyang is never played without the ketuk.

They are shaped like bonang

Bonang

The bonang is a musical instrument used in the Javanese gamelan. It is a collection of small gongs placed horizontally onto strings in a wooden frame , either one or two rows wide. All of the kettles have a central boss, but around it the lower-pitched ones have a flattened head, while the higher...

, but are generally placed in their own frame (rancak). The kempyang is pitched higher (about one octave

Octave

In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...

, although it depends if they are in the pelog

Pelog

Pelog is one of the two essential scales of gamelan music native to Bali and Java, in Indonesia. The other scale commonly used is called slendro. Pelog has seven notes, but many gamelan ensembles only have keys for five of the pitches...

 or slendro

Slendro

Slendro is a pentatonic scale, one of the two most common scales used in Indonesian gamelan music, the other being pélog.-Tuning:...

 set. Both have a central boss like the bonang, but the kempyang has a rounder top (like the higher bonangs), while the ketuk has a flat top (like the lower bonangs).

In the common numerical notation, kempyang strokes are marked by "-" while the ketuk is marked by "+". The ketuk pattern is used to classify longer gendhing

Gendhing

The gendhing is a class of gendhing structures used in Javanese gamelan music. Gendhing can also be used to refer to gamelan compositions in general....

 types, where it refers to the number of ketuk strokes in a nongan.

Reference

• Titon, Jeff Todd, Timothy Cooley, and David Locke. Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World's Peoples. Belmont: Clark Baxter, 2009.