Gamelan music is polyphonic: certain instruments play the nuclear theme, others the ornamental variations and counter-melodies, whilst others keep and determine tile tempi, and a fourth group regulates tile musical paraphrasing and interpunctuation.

Comparison with Western polyphonic music, as it reached its zenith in the monumental works of Johann Sebastian Bach, is not really admissible. Western polyphony has its strict rules, and is constructed almost mathematically, whilst the polyphony practiced by the gameIan players is much freer. For this reason the musicologist jaap Kunst can even speak of 'heterophony'.