November 17, 2006
The Cloud Nine Marimbula

The Kalimba Club just bought a Cloud 9 Marimbula for its upcoming performance at the Synchronicity Center on Sunday night, Nov 19th at 7pm. The marimbula is a big bass kalimba which plays about two octaves lower than the typical kalimba. I will save the full review for later.

First, check out how it sounds on this Karimba Track. By the way, this is one of the exercises in the Karimba Book that you'll find on my next CD, Rule of Thumb (available in December!).

The Cloud Nine has a rich woody sound that can get a bit muddy if you aren't careful. The power spectra below illustrate.

The above power spectra shows how much power is in each "note" or frequency when I play the lowest note on the Cloud Nine Marimbula and deaden all the other notes. This is C2, at 65 Hz, and most of the power is in a broad peak at 65 Hz (this is actually how I tune the marimbula, as my guitar tuner doesn't pick this note up very well). There are other harmonics that are excited. Some of these are from the "ringing" of the box, but a few are actual overtones of the vibrating tine.

The above power spectrum shows the same plot for the same note, but this time I have not deadened the other tines. As you can see, several other notes on the marimbula get excited when you pluck the low C tine. These other notes will tend to muddy the sound you get. In order to keep the sound clean, I tend to play the note I want while deadening the other notes.