Wake up! You are smart, you just have to LOOK! If you look at a kalimba with tines made of spring steel with uniform properties, you can more or less infer what tuning it is in just by looking at the length of the tines. Most modern kalimbas have an alternating note layout which will make a nice V shape, as the Hugh Tracey Alto and Treble do. On the other hand, many traditional instruments such as the student karimba, the African tuned 17-note karimba, and the mbira dzavadzimu will have stretches of notes that make a scale. When you see a student karimba, you can see the tines dont simply make a V, but that the right four notes make one scale segment while the left three notes make another higher scale segment. Next time you see a kalimba, look at the tines and see what you can figure out about its tuning. When you hold a kalimba in your hand, you will know the shorter tines play higher notes and the longer tines play lower notes. You can apply that knowledge to help you play, especially when improvising or playing a strange new kalimba. On a rustic hand-made mbira dzavadzimu, the tine thickness will not be uniform on the different segments of the instrument, and you cant necessarily tell which notes are higher or lower just by the length.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 21:00:01 +0000
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