Tuning:  Karimba

I get a lot of requests for Karimba Tunings.

The Karimba is an African-tuned member of the kalimba family tree. I think of the Kalimba as being about 50% African and 50% European in its musical heritage: the logic and sound are African, the scale is European. Now, the Karimba is more like 95% African: the note layout and scale are entirely African (unless you tune it to the closest western scale notes).

Hear what the karimba sounds like.

The Karimba comes tuned to something close to A, I suppose so it can play with its older cousin the Mbira. The notes do not lie exactly on the western scale, as the 3rds and 7ths are a bit flat. Here is the westernized tuning in A.

Here are the numerical relationships. Note that the 2nd and 4th are missing from the lower octave, but several upper notes are doubled.

The exact African tuning looks something like this.

Letters with "0" under them are tuned exactly, and the numbers like -50 indicate that the note should be tuned 50 cents flat. This is easy to accomplish with an electronic tuner.

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Actually, the Karimbas sound great with the kalimbas, assuming they are tuned to the same key. Try tuning these to G, unless you are playing with Mbiras.

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Soon, I'll write about the buzzers. There are a lot of different things you can do with the buzzers, but I really like the wave-sounds that the buzzers make, and I think this will one day be as big a kalimba seller as the "wah" effect of the box kalimbas. But here is what the G-tuned karimba sounds like without buzzers.

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