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Looking at a gamelan playing, we always notice that the players are organized as a group. We are dealing with a music that is, above all, a multi-player incident. The orchestra is a unit where each player plays in coherence with the others. Each instrument is necessary and correlates what the other instruments play. Interdependence between intruments is particularly high in gamelan and is satisfied by the players' natural accuracy and sense of harmonious rhythm.
Musical interaction between the players is important in music in general. But here, this interaction becomes the very essence of gamelan. It impregnates with each note, each rhythm, everything becomes synchronized. Where accuracy was a necessary difficulty, it becomes here a musical pleasure lived by the players as a whole. It is not anymore a constraint on speed but an encouragement.
In these conditions, solo performance is meaningless and would be uninteresting to the ear. Improvisation exists but less at the individual level than at the orchestra level. Individual expression is drowned into the global interaction between instruments.
The gaiety of gamelan and that mutual understanding between the different instruments no doubt comes from the jovial and relaxed nature of peoples like the Javanese and the Balinese. Listening to their music's complex structures and rhythms, we can imagine that they perceive the complexity and diversity of their environment, and of existence in general, as a macrocosmic reflection of their art. If we are to believe Balinese gamelan, the more complex it is, better it is. The Balinese use the term ramai, or ramé, to express the noisy, complex, rich, crowded aspect of things. This aspect is also seen in their sculpture, architecture, dance, dance costumes, stories and beliefs.
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