October 4, 2006
The Virtues of the D Minor Tuned Treble Kalimba (or, What's a Mode?)

I've been calling it the D minor tuned Treble kalimba, but it is also F major or, as we see today, the G Dorian.

You probably understand the difference between the major scale and the minor scale, and you probably understand that in a given key - G major say - you can also play a minor scale (E minor). It is more complex than that. In each key, there are actually 7 different modes, or scales, you can play. I go through the modes in my fundamentals books.

On the Alto, the most obvious mode is the regular old G major scale, since you start and stop on G, with exactly two octaves. The other modes are there, but you need to start at the correct note, and then you don't have exactly two octaves, but rather one octave in the middle and part of one both above and below.

Now, what about the Treble kalimba? With 17 tines, it is over two octaves, but I've never really connected well with the tuning it has when it comes out of the box. It is tuned to the key of G, but the lowest note is B, the major third of the G major scale. This tuning does have the advantange that it plays perfectly with the G major-tuned Alto Kalimba.

Recently, I stumbled upon a different way of tuning the Treble Kalimba that makes great sense to me in many ways. I've presented music in this tuning for several weeks now, and I'll spend the next several weeks showing you different ways of making sense of this tuning.

If we were to start on F in the diagram above, we would get the regular old F major scale. But that's old hat. What else can this tuning do? The kalimba used to be based in G, so we'll just try it in G to see what this tuning does if you pick it up and play it like any old Treble tuned the regular way. The answer is: you get the Dorian mode.

If you are unclear about the concept of a "mode": consider the eight notes of the Major scale, "do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do". Of course, it makes a spiral staircase, going up again as "do, re, mi..." to ever higher octaves, until it is out of our hearing range. A lot of western music is written in this mode (from "Doe a Deer" to "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to "Blowin' in the Wind"). However, we can take the exact same notes, and just start on a different note, and the scale will sound totally different: to get your place, sing "do", but now start counting 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 with "re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do, re". It ends on "re", so it's going up the first step of the second octave. This is called the Dorian mode. As you can see, there will be seven different modes based on the regular old major scale, each starting on a different note, and each will have a different sound and a different emotional feel. We'll explore five of the different modes with this new treble tuning, and show you how natural they are on this kalimba.

Here is a recording of me playing in the G Dorian mode on this kalimba. I first lay out the scale, and then I start goofing around. Of course, I encourage you to retune your Treble (assuming you have access to a tuner) and to goof around as well.

Listen to the Dm tuned modes.

If you understand intervals: The Dorian mode is a form of minor scale - you've got the minor third, the minor 7th, but a major 6th (this is the note that makes it sound like Pink Floyd). Explore on your own. Don't restrict yourself to the 1-8 notes I've written on the tuning chart. You will find that the high note on the kalimba is D, which is the 5th of the G Dorian scale. This is a convenient note to end on. But also, do come back home to the root note, G, or 1 on the diagram.