August 23, 2006
Kalimba Tuning Contest Winner

Kalimba Tuning Contest Winner: ERIC ZANG

Eric took his G-tuned Alto kalimba and just flattened the B's to B flat (Bb), which gives the kalimba a minor feeling in the lower half of the G scale and a major feeling in the upper half of the G scale:

Download the KTabS (version 1.0.4) file of this song

What's KTabS?

Above is an example of what you can do with this tuning, done up in KTabS. (If you find you can't open the above file in KTabS, check that you have the current version, which was 1.0.4 at the writing of this tip. If your version is older, you may need to upgrade before you can open the above file--but it's easy: go to the KTabS website to upgrade or download a trial.)

If you have KTabS and you want to play around with this tuning, there are two ways to do it. You could start out with something already written in G, and click the configuration button (just below the Window menu). Here you can click-select any tine you want to retune, then click the note on the piano to which you want to tune the kalimba. Easy, eh?

The other way is to create a "Zang Tuning Template". When you go to make a new song, edit the configuration as above, and SAVE the template so you can easily make dozens of songs in this tuning.

Other contest winners coming up: Jim Gates and Andy Robinson!