Like all gamelans Cragg Vale Gamelan had many different kinds of instruments. Our traditional instruments were made to order in Indonesia and included gongs, kempul (small gongs), kenongs, kempyangs and bonangs (smaller gong-shaped instruments which are played on the floor).
However, many of our instruments were home-made metallophones built in 1987 from scrap steel and wood. There are four sizes: soprano, alto, tenor and bass, and each had the notes F, G, Bb, C, D and top F. (This scale is based on an Indonesian pentatonic scale).
Other forms of tuned percussion included: large cowbells, boobams (drain pipes of varying lengths with plywood stuck on top) and we also made use of non-traditional instruments including saxophone, flute, clarinet, piano, didgeridoo and guitar.
Our untuned percussion mainly comprised African and Middle Eastern drums and cheng chengs (small Indonesian cymbals) but we also had a lot of weird and wonderful hand percussion (bought and home-made).