Kalimba tunings

Hey all,

My wife and I picked up a pair (alto and soprano) Hugh Tracey kalimbas on
Sunday.

I tuned them briefly to a quasi 7-equal, and was sick of that pretty
quickly. I realized I wanted expressive, xentonal or otherwise, half-steps.

What traditional or experimental tunings does anyone suggest for kalimbas? I
saw this post, which looked interesting:

/makemicromusic/topicId_11002.html#11072

-Aaron

Hi Aaron,

I can't suggest any original kalimba tunings, I can only say something about various suggestions of mine or of other people here who I was consulting it with.

I have a kalimba myself which has 11 metal tongues ... My first inspiration were the Master Musicians of Tanzania with the lead singer Hukwe Zawose. Almost all of their music was played in harmonic 5-tone scales like 6:7:8:9:10:12. So this was the first idea for retuning my kalimba - I used two copies of this scale an octave apart. Later? I used 5-limit JI sets of triadic combinations like, for instance, E-G-A-B-D-E-F#-G-B-D-E. Even later, I invited other TL members to join in. Graham suggested a harmonic scale of 6:7:8:9:10:11:12:13:14:15:16. I made a small piece of music with that and then I made another one with another harmonic "extract", ranging from 5 to 15. Then, Herman suggested to try mavila so I took the 5-tone mavila scale and used two, one octave apart. If you want to know more, I can find the recordings and tell you what you ask.

Petr

PS: BTW, Daniel Forró was the one who bought the kalimba for me ... Daniel, any suggestions on your side?

Petr

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Aaron Johnson <aaron@...> wrote:
>
> Hey all,
>
> My wife and I picked up a pair (alto and soprano) Hugh Tracey kalimbas on
> Sunday.
>
> I tuned them briefly to a quasi 7-equal, and was sick of that pretty
> quickly. I realized I wanted expressive, xentonal or otherwise, half-steps.
>
> What traditional or experimental tunings does anyone suggest for kalimbas? I
> saw this post, which looked interesting:
>
> /makemicromusic/topicId_11002.html#11072
>
> -Aaron

/tuning/topicId_78054.html#78060

--George

>

Ahh, sorry, George, so it was you, not Graham. Why on earth have I once again confused you with Graham? :-(

Petr

Hi, Peter, I'm glad you still can use and enjoy your kalimba - I got
it at Frankfurt Music Fair. I haven't any suggestion concerning
tuning. Just do whatever you like and what's possible, you did well.
You know my experimental nature, so I don't think ethnic instruments
must be tuned the same way like it's usual in the country of their
origin. But certainly there are some physical limitations done by the
construction.

Some time ago I have started to experiment with tunings on my two
kotos and culturally shock my Japanese friends, koto players with
microtones :-) They all are so deeply obedient to their gurus and
closed in their tradition that such sins are unimaginable to them.
They use only Japanese scales, or diatonic, rarely some other modes
in contemporary works, and tune with the help of digital tuner so
result is approximately 12 ET (we perform often together, I play
piano or synthesizer, so it's in tune, so-so). Never mind, anytime I
can pretend just to be only stupid gaijin :-) Probably I will come to
the buddhistic hell jigoku one day. But it's pretty interesting evenon the standard 13 string koto. Japanese don't take care about the
left part of the string, and when used in some modern compositions,
only for detuned sound effect, tuning is random and on every koto
different. It would be great to try to change the total tension of
the string that the relation in tuning L:R would be part of the
tuning system. That way 26 tones would be usable! Hopefully I find a
way to explain it to the koto technician. But it would be not so easy
because of construction and binding the strings (there are no tuning
pegs on standard koto). Therefore I'm trying to get 17 or more string
instrument, they have pegs additionally to shifting bridges.

Daniel Forro

On 4 Apr 2009, at 5:39 AM, Petr Parízek wrote:

>
> PS: BTW, Daniel Forró was the one who bought the kalimba for me ...
> Daniel, any suggestions on your side?
>
> Petr

Aaron Johnson wrote:
> Hey all,
> > My wife and I picked up a pair (alto and soprano) Hugh Tracey kalimbas > on Sunday.
> > I tuned them briefly to a quasi 7-equal, and was sick of that pretty > quickly. I realized I wanted expressive, xentonal or otherwise, half-steps.
> > What traditional or experimental tunings does anyone suggest for > kalimbas? I saw this post, which looked interesting:
> > /makemicromusic/topicId_11002.html#11072

One thing to look for is the size of the thirds. I like to use mavila tunings, which have the opposite pattern of major and minor thirds compared with the diatonic scale. Porcupine would also be an interesting alternative. But neither of those temperaments have a half-step-sized interval in their 7-note scales...

Diatonic: Mavila: Porcupine:

C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B
E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D
M m m M M m m m M M m m M M m m m M M m m

Or you could look for scales with different patterns of large and small steps. Wilson's golden horogram no. 11, labeled "Lucas", looks interesting, with its 3 small steps of 126.69 cents and 4 large steps of 204.98 cents.

Herman wrote:

> Porcupine would also be an interesting alternative.

I never thought of that. If I find a way to set this up on my 11-piece kalimba, I'll probably try that as well.

Petr