September 13, 2006
Starry Night on the Treble in D minor Tuning

Sometimes you will retune your kalimba to a special tuning for a particular song, for example, when I lift my Ds up to D sharps when I do Morocco(click to listen), and then retune back to D naturals for my next song. However, if you have a tuning you really like, you will want to leave your kalimba in that tuning for days, weeks, or even months. If you can afford a second kalimba to leave in this alternate tuning, by all means get one. And if you do, you may want to put a small sticker on the back of the kalimba spelling out the tuning, just to remind yourself.

On Monday, I mentioned retuning a Treble Hugh Tracey from G to D minor. Here is that tuning:

Here is the first riff from Starry Night, a song I wrote while waiting in line at the Post Office, mailing a few kalimbas across the country. (I love waiting in line when I have a kalimba in my hands, especially when something wonderful like this happens!) For the first two measures, the right hand is doing something simple - a two note phrase which is repeated, always landing on the beat. The left hand is a little syncopated, sometimes landing on the beat, sometimes off the beat.

If you want to hear how this goes, please download the trial version of KTabS and you can then play the .ktb file below.

Starry Night (KTabS file)

Anyway, I am leaving this kalimba tuned to D minor for quite some time, as I have already gotten three songs out of it in just a week. I'll be performing some of these with The Holdouts at Montgomery's Grill and Saloon on September 15.