Kurulung
Getar — the shake. The frame is held and the tabung dasar swung side to side for as long as the note lasts. Recommended 2–3 shakes per second.
Angklung simulator · synthesised, no recordings
One angklung, one note
An angklung simulator you can play right here in the browser. The sound is synthesised from a physical model of a bamboo tube — no recordings at all.
Tap any angklung above — or press the button.
Sound can only start from your own tap — browsers require it, iOS especially.
Eight angklung, drawn to scale: the longer the tube, the lower the note. Each is a complete instrument, and each can sound exactly one note. The number underneath is its identity — that is what the ensemble leader signals, not the name of the note.
3This song needs people
6distinct notes
30sBintang Kecil
These figures are worked out from the song. Play it, and hear for yourself why one person is not enough.
So a song is not one instrument but a room of people, each holding one or two angklung, each waiting for their note to arrive. The instrument is distributed. Playing it is a coordination problem, and that is what this simulates.
See how it splits up →A worked example you can follow to the end
Four notes, three distinct pitches. Every figure below is computed by the same solver the rest of the site uses — none of it is written by hand.
First, write down when each note sounds and for how long.
- C40–1s2.5–3.5s
- E40.5–1.5s
- G42–3s
Distinct pitches: C4 · E4 · G4
Then compare each pair of pitches: is there any instant where both are sounding?
- C4 and E4 collide at 0.5 seconds — two people
- C4 and G4 collide at 2.5 seconds — two people
- E4 and G4 are never together — one person can hold both
Pitches that ever collide need different people. Pitches that never collide can share one pair of hands.
So this phrase needs 2 people.
- Player 1 · C4
- Player 2 · E4 + G4
What if a note moved?
Drag G4 to the left until it sounds alongside C4 and E4. No note is added and none is removed — the only change is when one note begins — and the number of people needed changes with it. That is where the difficulty actually lives: not in how many notes there are, but in how many sound at once.
This example is deliberately as short as it can be, so it can be checked by hand. A real song has dozens of notes, but the rule is exactly the same one — no extra rule appears later.
Three techniques, one model
Almost every angklung app is a soundboard: tap a picture of bamboo, hear a note. That models the sound and misses the instrument. Here the sound is synthesised from a physical model of a bamboo tube — no recordings at all — and the way the notes spread across players is the point.
Centok
Sentak — the pull. The tabung dasar is pulled sharply into the palm. It sounds once: short, like pizzicato.
Tengkep
Like kurulung, but one tube is held with the little finger so it cannot vibrate. Softer, fewer partials.
2–3 Hz · kurulung
The interesting part: tengkep
Tengkep
On an angklung melodi, tengkep silences the octave tube, so you hear one pure note instead of the usual two. On a major angklung akompanimen it does something else: without tengkep four tubes sound a dominant seventh; hold one tube with the little finger and three remain, a major triad. The player’s little finger is a chord-quality switch.
Accompaniment angklung →The path
Six pages, in the order people learn the angklung: play first, understand why, then arrange your own. Pages you have opened are marked — the marks are kept only in this browser.
01PlayStart here
02UnderstandHow it works
03ArrangeYour own melody
Why there is no Sundanese song here yet
Only public-domain or own-composition melodies ship, and so far none of them is Sundanese repertoire. Not for copyright reasons: Cing Cangkeling and Tokecang have no recorded composer. The reason is accuracy. Shipping a wrong melody under its real name misrepresents a living tradition, and copying cipher notation from a single unchecked source is not enough to rule that out. The gap is deliberate and ought to be filled — the requirements are written down in data/melodies/README.md.