Graph coloring for determining angklung distribution

Abstract

Abstract Angklung is a traditional instrument originated from West Java, Indonesia. It is played by shaking it and each angklung can only produce one note. A set of angklungs are needed in order to produce a whole song. An angklung player can hold no more than seven angklungs because of the size of the instrument. A player also cannot hold two overlapping angklungs since shaking more than one angklung at the same time is nearly impossible. These restrictions create problems that can be modeled as mathematical problem. It is called the angklung distribution problem, which is the problem of distributing angklungs to each player based on a given song so that no player holds two or more overlapping angklungs with the least possible number of players. In this paper, we model this problem into a graph theoretical problem where we use the concept of graph coloring to solve this problem. We also develop a method to lower the number of players suggested from the graph coloring by viewing the song as an array of symbols.