Another sound that carries very far on the night air is the music of the gamelan, that of the big gongs in particular.

There are usually 15 different types of instrument in a modern gamelan orchestra. There are various kinds of metal gongs and xylophones, some of them slung over sound boxes; there are double-ended horizontal drums on wooden stand; there is a wooden xylophone, a bamboo flute called a suling, and a two-stringed bowed lute, the rebab. The gamelan orchestra is thus composed mainly of percussion instruments.

The instruments of this orchestra are arranged in a traditional pattern behind the dalang in a wayang performance. It has already been noted that the drummer is the leading player, who passes on the coded signals about music to the rest of the orchestra; he sits close enough to the dalang, usually at the centre of the gamelan orchestra.

This means that there is a distance of about 5 meters from the screen to the far edge of the orchestra arrangement. So if the audience wishes to sit on the dalang’s side of the screen, it cannot sit very close to him. In contrast, the audience sitting on the shadow side need be no further away than is necessary to take in the extent of the “stage” at a glance. If an audience is to sit on both sides of the screen, then a considerable length must be allowed when planning the performance. Quite often, a performance is planned for an audience on only one side, and this is more often the dalang’s side of the screen today.