December 28, 2006
Experimental Microtonal Tunings with the Pentatonic Kalimba

More about the pentatonic kalimba/pentatonic scale.

If you are thinking of experimenting with microtonal tunings (i.e., with notes that don't lie on the grid of recognized western notes such as C or C#, but somewhere in between those notes), the Pentatonic is a good place to start. One reason: no two tines form a half-step interval, but the minimum intervals are either a whole step or a step and a half, so there is a bit more space for moving the pitch of the notes around.

Traditional African tunings don't lie on the grid of recognized western notes - so I encourage you to experiment with this. And the kalimba is one of the few instruments that gives you complete freedom to tune each note individually.

Note: if you don't like "blues notes" (which are microtonal - i.e., between two adjacent notes on the western chromatic scale) you might want to ignore this tip.

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