In Reply to: Bali Gongs posted by jane_n on Tuesday, 18. October 2011 at 04:20 Bali Time:
Quick story about a mission I went on once to get a gong.
I play(ed) in a gamelan gong kebyar group in Sydney. The instruments are owned by the Australian museum and are stored by the music dept of Syd Uni, anyway, the main big gong needed replacing and I volunteered to go to Bali and purchase and bring back a new one for the Museum.
I had a recording of the tuning to make sure I got one that was in tune with our set of instruments, we negotiated a price before I left.
At the foundry I spent about 4 hours testing the gongs out, listening to the tone and tuning etc and finally selected the perfect specimen.
Took some photos, thumbs up, smiling in front of the hanging, precious item.
I arranged for it to be packaged in a wooden crate and sent to the airport. I paid $500US in extra baggage to get it on the flight and not sent as cargo.
Arrived home,
..relieved.
Once at home I took it out of the crate and hung it up on me back deck and hit it and sent the lush low frequency tone reverberate around my suburb. Nice.
Anyway,
i was looking at it and then was looking at my photo's and noticed the piece of plastic rope used to hang it (before it's set up with the proper hangers) was a different colour in the photo!
They had switched the gong I had painstakingly selected and swaped it with another one!
On closer inspection I could see it had a few little imperfections, it still sounded OK but now I wasn't sure if it was in tune! F***K! Why didn't I check inside the crate before I put it on the plane!
Anyway..
I didn't mention any of these to the group or the museum. I set it up with the other instruments and with great fanfare and ceremony went play it for the first time, sh*ting myself that it would be outa tune...and to my great relief...it wasn't! It sounded beautiful. Phew!
I never mention this little story to any off them (a little secret between me and 'my' gong)
(Although if any group members read this forum..the story is out now!)