Koesoemadinata is widely known among the
Sundanese people as a composer. He wrote Sundanese traditional songs such as "Lemah Cai" (Our Native Land), "Dewi Sartika" and "Sinom Puspasari". He was also a playwright and director of Sundanese music-dramas called
Rinenggasari; among those he wrote are
Sarkam-Sarkim and
Satan Mindo Wahyu Revelation (Satan Personification as Divine Revelation). He formulated the Sundanese solfège system (
da mi na ti la) and wrote many theoretical publications on
Sundanese music, including
Ilmu Seni Raras (Our Musical Art) (1969) and
Ringkesan Pangawikan Rinenggaswara (An outline of
music theory) (1950). His research and experimentation on tone and scale systems led him in 1950 to his 17–tone Sundanese tuning and scale system, in which one octave consists of 17 equal intervals of 7010/17 cents. (Weintraub (2001) suggests that Koesoemadinata was aware of 17-tone theories that had been developed for Persian art music, but another source close to Koesoemadinata considers that he would only have known of the western 12-note chromatic scale, as he had no access to world literature on
ethnomusicology.) Koesoemadinata's knowledge on the Sundanese
pelog and
salendro music system was acquired in his youth by learning to play the
gamelan and the
rebab, as well as by learning how to sing Sundanese tunes from Sundanese musicians and singers. He was introduced to science and western music theory when he was at the school for teachers (
Kweekschool and
Hogere Kweekaschool) in
Sumedang,
West Java, where he started his research on the frequency measurement of sounds from gamelan instruments and Sundanese singing. In 1923, he created the Sundanese solfège system (
da mi na ti la) and wrote a book on Sundanese music theory entitled
Elmuning Kawih Sunda (Science of Sundanese Music). After completing Hogere Kweekaschool, he worked as a teacher from 1924 to 1932, while he continued his research into the theory of Sundanese music. Between 1927 and 1929, Koesoemadinata met
Jaap Kunst, a Dutch ethnomusicologist who was conducting research on musical instruments in
Java and
Bali. They jointly wrote and published articles, and Koesoemadinata is often cited in Kunst's 1934 book
De Toonkunst van Java. During this period, Koesoemadinata gained a better understanding of the frequencies of gamelan and of vocal sounds, and he started to perform frequency measurements using a
monochord. He converted the frequency intervals into a logarithmic
musical scale, using the concept of
cents from Ellis (1884) and Hornbostel (1920) and Reiner's concept of musical rule. In 1933, the colonial government commissioned Koesoemadinata to form a Sundanese music education system for all-indigenous schools in
West Java. After the independence of
Indonesia, from 1945 until 1947, he taught science, history and English for high school teachers in
Bandung. The rest of his professional career was spent mainly as an expert for the Department of Culture of West Java in Bandung. He was also an adjunct lecturer at the Gamelan
Conservatory in
Surakarta,
Central Java from 1953 to 1959. In 1958 (to 1959) he was appointed its director. ==Gamelan Ki Pembayun==