Key Flexibility on the Kalimba

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Why do you need key flexibility? Who needs it?

Most kalimbas are diatonic instruments - meaning they play the notes "Do Re Me Fa Sol La Ti Do" in some key. In the key of C, those notes are "C D E F G A B C". In the key of A, those notes are "A B C# D E F# G# A".

Most people who pick up the kalimba will not need key flexibility. Do you play by yourself and not with other instruments? Do you never sing with your kalimba? You probably don't need key flexibility. You will be best off getting a kalimba that sounds great and just loving that one kalimba to death.

Do you know what a capo is? A capo is a device that gets mounted on a guitar neck and lets you temporarilly and artificially shorten the length of all the strings. If you know a song in G, but you are playing it for someone with a higher voice who wants to sing it in A or Bb or B, you can play the song exactly the way you know it, with the capo on fret 2, or 3, or 4 to achieve that perfect key for your singer friend. A capo is a very simple solution to key flexibility on guitar. Unfortunately, there is not a kalimba capo.

The flip side of this: try singing a song with your kalimba. The song might happen to have a melody line that perfectly fits within your vocal range in the key of your kalimba. More likely, you will find some notes in the song that are too high or too low to comfortably sing. If you sing with your kalimba, it would be really nice to have a kalimba that could change keys.

Likewise, if you play in a band with other instruments, chances are you play songs in many different keys. There are 12 keys (in the common Western music schema), though some are used more than others. Actually, some groups will play a lot in G and C, others might like E, A, and D, while a band with horns might like Bb, F, and Eb, and a band supporting vocalists might find that all keys are used. If you play kalimba in a band, you might want to play in several different keys.

How to achieve key flexibility on the kalimba

One way to achieve key flexibility is to use a chromatic kalimba. The current scheme for chromatic kalimbas puts an Alto-style kalimba in one particular key on the front, and all the other notes on the back. If you are playing in the key of the front kalimba notes, this is easy. Keys which are close to this key on the "circle of 5ths" will only require a few notes from the back of the kalimba. However, there will be several keys that will have as many notes on the back as on the front, and the plain truth is that it isn't trivial to play notes on the back of the kalimba that cannot be seen. For that reason, I don't recommend the chromatic kalimba as a general solution for key flexibility. It can be done, but you need to become an expert at playing the two-sided chromatic kalimba.

For the "hands on" studio musician, I would recommend that you just retune your kalimba to change the key for each song you need. It takes me between 30 seconds and 5 minutes to change keys, depending upon how many notes I need to retune. You can find some notes on changing the key of your kalimba here. Perhaps the best example of someone doing this is Gregorio McCluer, who retunes his kalimba almost daily. On the other hand, Sharon Eaton finds that when a kalimba is retuned, new buzzes or other defects arrise. While these buzzes can usually be easily fixed, it is a hassle, and Sharon finds that when she gets a kalimba sounding good in a particular tuning, she likes to just keep it there.

I think the easiest way to achieve key flexibility on the kalimba is to have a number of different kalimbas in all the different keys you need. We have made several comparisons between harmonica and kalimba. They are both diatonic instruments and share other parallels. Because harmonicas are so inexpensive, the general solution to key flexibility on the harmonica is to get a set of them in different keys. There are chromatic harmonicas, but they are quite different from the standard harmonica, and are not so easy to play. The kalimbas are more expensive than harmonicas, so you probably don't want to get all 12 keys as many harmonica players do, but a set of 3, 4, or 5 keyed kalimbas is quite reasonable.

Differently-keyed Diatonic Kalimbas - The Harmonica Analogy

About half the kalimbas I sell are the Hugh Tracey Alto. The other twenty types of kalimbas I sell make up the other half. So, the Hugh Tracey Alto kalimba, with exactly two octaves, root note in the bass and at the top of the range, is pretty much the canonical note layout for the modern kalimba - just as the 3 octave, 10 holed harmonica is the canonical note layout for the harmonica. The six painted tines help you keep your place around the kalimba, and if you've played the Alto for a year or more, those painted tines are like neighborhood sign posts.

If you pick up any non-chromatic harmonica in any key, you play a given song like "Mary Had A Little Lamb" with exactly the same holes, blown or sucked, but each differently-keyed harmonica will have different notes in those holes. You can make key-flexible kalimbas in much the same way, shifting all the notes up or down to provide the different pitches required by each key.

Well, actually there are some limitations to exactly how far you can pull the tines out to lower them, or push them in to raise the pitch, but with the creative placement of those six painted tines, we've got a scheme that makes differently-keyed kalimbas almost as similar as the differently-keyed harmonicas are.

To cover the full 12 keys possible, we actually use three different kalimba designs. The larger Alto Kalimba, usually pitched in G, can be retuned to the neighboring keys of F, F#, G, Ab, or A. The Bb Treble Kalimba can be keyed in A, Bb, B, or C. And the D Treble Kalimba can be keyed in C, C#, D, Eb, or E. We explain a bit about these instruments below.

The Alto Kalimba Covers F, F#, G, Ab, and A

The Alto kalimba is designed to play in the key of G. This means several things. The size of the Alto kalimba is designed for a low note of G below middle C. As you make longer tines that have lower fundamental vibrational frequncies, the box and the air compartment surrounded by the box will resonate less strongly with those lower notes. In other words, as you tune the lowest note on the Alto lower and lower, its volume will be less and less.

That said, it is perfectly reasonable to pull the tines down to F#, and even the key of F has a respectable volume for the lowest note. I would recommend against tuning all the way down to E, unless you play the kalimba on or in a larger resonating device to help amplify the lowest notes. Another factor working against the key of E is that the tines are not long enough, and pulling them this low without pushing the bridge further up will pull the tines right off the half-round back stop.

Alternatively, we could push the tines in to raise the pitch. However, if the tines are pushed in by much more than a whole step, they start to sound weak and thin. Going up a whole step usually still sounds fine, so the Alto kalimba can reliably go up to the key of A by pushing all tines in by a whole step.

If you owned several Altos in these keys, they would be painted the same, and each would be tuned to two octaves of "Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do". You could play the exact same songs on each kalimba, and anything you learn on one of them will be totally applicable to the others. But each will be pitched differently, for all the reasons we mentioned earlier in this article.

Bb Treble Kalimba - Covers A, Bb, B, and C

The Bb Treble was invented to give the Treble's range (i.e., higher than the Alto) with the Alto's note layout. The Treble has two more tines than the Alto's 15 tine 2-octave note layout. The Bb Treble's lowest 15 notes have the same note layout as the Alto, and then the extra two notes are placed at the top of the range - i.e., one on the far left and one on the far right, so the instrument feels like an Alto with an extra note on each side. Anything you can play on the Alto can be played in the Bb Treble.

The main point is that the tines are painted just like the Alto (neglecting the outer tine on each side). Bb is the "native key" of this instrument (i.e., the key that requires the minimum of retuning from the standard Treble kalimba), but this instrument can be tuned to A, Bb, B, or C just as the Alto can be retuned to several nearby keys.

D Treble Kalimba - Covers C, C#, D, Eb, and E

If we took a Bb Treble and pushed the tines in two whole steps, we would be in the key of D instead of Bb, but the shortest tines would be very high indeed - so high that they wouldn't sound so good. In order to get those higher keys like D, we have a trick - instead of retuning by pushing the tines in that far, we can shift the painted tines outward, getting rid of the two extra tines on the far left and far right. Of course, we don't really want to get rid of them - rather, we put the "extra tines" in the center, below the 15 notes representing the canonical 2-octave range. So the lowest note is not the root note, but rather the 6th. The next note is the 7th, and then the third note is th 8th, or the 1, which is the root. It is unpainted, but the next two notes up are painted (just as they are with the Alto). The native tuning, i.e., the key which is closest to the Treble in standard tuning, is D, and we can go a whole step below (to C) or a whole step up (to E). In other words, the D Treble can cover C, C#, D, Eb, or E.

One important note to consider: as the lowest note on these kalimbas is the 6th, which is the relative minor, this note layout is especially nice for playing in the relative minor key to the kalimba.

In Conclusion

Any key you want or need can be accommodated by the Alto, the Bb Treble, or the D Treble and their retunings by moving a whole step down or up. By limiting ourselves to at most a whole step in retuning, we will get a pretty good sound which is similar to the starting sound of the Hugh Tracey instrument.

If you are doing this at home, you are free to take a Treble and retune it by pulling tines in or out a bit. (Be careful! You would hate to push your fingers into the tines.) But the Bb and D Trebles are not just standard trebles that have been retuned - they have also be repainted to be consistent with the pattern which the Alto kalimba defines for its 2 octave run.

If you read tablature, the Alto tablature will work for any of these kalimbas. This is good, because there are more instructional books and downloads available for the Alto than for any other kalimba. (Of course, the tablature will have no instructions for what to do with the top two notes on the Bb Treble or the bottom two notes of the D Treble, but you will quickly find uses for these extra notes which step outside of the Alto's note pattern.)

The professional harmonica player can walk into a gig with a case of harmonicas covering all or most keys, and that player can switch among the different instruments without even having to think, because the note layouts are identical for all of the harmonicas. In exactly the same way, kalimba players can now get a collection of Altos, Bb Trebles, and D Trebles tuned to the keys they need, and pick up any of these instruments without having to relearn anything.

The Bb and D Trebles are now available in the standard box-mounted format or as board-mounted celestes.

This important innovation in key flexible diatonic kalimbas is available only from Kalimba Magic.

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If you need kalimbas in multiple keys, we do have a special deal going called The Keymaster. We will send you four Hugh Tracey Kalimbas with pickups - usually two Altos and two Trebles - tuned to the keys that you need them in! (Some people want them for enemble work, which saves me the trouble of retuning and repainting.) When you purchase the four Keymaster kalimbas, not only do you pay nothing extra for retuning and/or repainting, but you also get a 25% price break - fantastic!