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KotekGet the app

Learn real gamelan with an interactive practice partner

Mount your phone above your gangsa. Kotek guides your strikes, listens to check your timing, and plays the interlocking kotekan part alongside you.

Download on theApp StoreSee how it works
Mount your phone above the instrument. Kotek shows you which key to strike, and listens to check that you hit it.
Dual-Engine Hit Detection

How Kotek verifies strikes in real time

Physical gamelan produces loud resonance and fast hand damping. Kotek pairs computer vision with acoustic spectrum analysis for zero-latency, error-free strike detection.

⚡Sensor Fusion Engine

Vision identifies the key, while audio detects the exact microsecond hit. Together, they eliminate false triggers with zero perceptible latency.

No instructor or partner to play with? No problem

Gamelan was never meant to be played alone, but finding an instructor or a partner to play with is not easy, and that makes practicing feel almost impossible.

Finding a partner to practice daily with is hard

Kotekan needs two players interlocking. Coordinating schedules with a teacher or partner means most days, you don’t practice at all.

Learning resources are hard to find

Notes and patterns are passed down from mouth to mouth. Finding them is tiring and time-consuming, so you waste the time you’d rather spend playing.

No one to correct you

Don’t let unnoticed mistakes become a habit. Kotek guides you to play with the correct timing and accent.

Kotek helps re-create the learning environment

Keep waiting on a partner and a resource, and you will never practice.

Built from the community, for everyone

Learners

Improve your playing by making daily practice easier to start.

Community

Create new kotekan patterns and spread them to community members.

University

Get hands on gamelan without waiting for ensemble time or a full instrument set.

Mekar Bhuana LogoCommunity Collaboration

Rooted in tradition with Mekar Bhuana

That is what Mekar Bhuana means, and it is the hope behind it: that Bali’s oldest music and dance become known again, at home and beyond it. In developing Kotek, we worked alongside Mekar Bhuana to understand how gamelan is truly taught, heard, and preserved.

How we understand the process of learning gamelan at the first place — observing traditional practice, hand damping, and the natural flow of kotekan.
Workshop session recording
Live gangsa rehearsal recorded at Mekar Bhuana
Paused
Vaughan Hatch and Putu Evie Suyadnyani, founders of Mekar Bhuana

The Centre

A family-run centre in Denpasar that documents, reconstructs and repatriates endangered classical gamelan. Vaughan Hatch founded it in 2000 around an antique Semara Pagulingan he restored, having found how few classical ensembles were ever recorded. Putu Evie Suyadnyani, a Legong dancer, brought the dance in 2004.

Antique gamelan instruments in the Mekar Bhuana collection

The Collection

Twenty-seven gamelan sets: twenty-two in Bali, five at Mekar Bhuana Aotearoa in New Zealand. Among them a Semara Patangian in the old key order that exists nowhere else outside Bali, and Semara Kirang, an Angklung set from Lombok restored in 2019.

Mekar Bhuana centre and workshop space in Denpasar

Visiting & Workshops

Lessons, workshops and cultural immersion, led by English-speaking experts including a native-speaking ethnomusicologist. The centre is a family home, so there are no walk-ins — book by email two weeks ahead.

Explore their archives, recordings, and workshop offerings at balimusicanddance.com

Visit Mekar Bhuana

Interactive learning and real-time guidance

Patterns

Learn various kotekan patterns

Beginner to expert patterns help you improve at your own pace. Step up to a higher difficulty when you are ready.

Roles

Adjust to match your play style

Different configurations to match your play style. Choose one of the kotekan roles, then let Kotek play the other to create a harmonious interlocking pattern.

Feedback

Track your improvement

Behind the scenes, a machine learning model detects your key hits and outputs a score that lets you track your improvement.

Built to preserve gamelan knowledge

Get you to practice immediately

Turn hours of hunting for resources and matching schedules into a practice space that’s ready when you are.

Make the learning process fun

An interactive interface and game-like cues make playing gamelan exciting.

Track skill improvement over time

Every session is scored, so the progress you can’t feel day to day becomes something you can see.

Promote the culture and grow the community

Keep the culture alive by getting people to play without hassle, and help communities flourish at the same time.

Everything you need to know

We’ve answered the questions people ask most often about Kotek.

What do I need before I start?

You’ll need a physical instrument to practice on. Kotek is built for playing on a real instrument, because that’s how it can help you build muscle memory and get the feel of it in your hands. You’ll also need a tripod or stand to hold your phone above the instrument, camera pointing down, so both of your hands are free to play.

What instrument can I play with this app?

Kotek is built around the gangsa of the gong kebyar family, an instrument with bronze keys over bamboo resonators, played with a single mallet while the left hand damps. It ships with a calibrated profile for that instrument, and because every village tunes differently, the app is designed to be calibrated per instrument rather than assuming a standard tuning.

Is this app beginner friendly?

Yes. Practice mode is the default for first-time players. There’s no score and no fail state: Kotek waits for you to hit the right key before moving on, and you can slow the tempo down until the pattern sits in your hands. Scoring only comes in when you decide you want it.

Mari ber-gangsa

Make your learning interactive and fun. Start your gamelan journey with Kotek.

Download on theApp Store