April 2, 2016

Mixing it up on the left side Mixing it up on the left While the three lower right notes sound great together (the C#, B, and A from the previous tip), the best is when you can create melodies using both the lower row notes and the upper row notes. Notice the pattern here – the first note of each measure is changing, but that changing note is answered by an unchanging two note phrase. The long range plan in this series: the right thumb will play something low, strong, and supportive while the left thumb plays a dancing melody. Ultimately, I’d like you to be able to improvise on

Scale fragment on the left thumb Using scale segments I find that there is a lot of African music that can be played in small scale fragments with just three notes. There are a lot of permutations you can make with these three notes. Let symmetry be your first guide, and let your ear be the second guide. A visually symmetric pattern often sounds great, but your ear is the final judge. The long range plan in this series: the right thumb will play something low, strong, and supportive while the left thumb plays a dancing melody. Ultimately, I’d like you to be able to improvise on the left side.

Giving the left thumb some good ideas – an arpeggio Up and down the A major arpeggio This exercise reduces the notes further and only plays the notes in the A major arpeggio. These will often be the most important notes for the left thumb, as they trace out the A major chord. The long range plan in this series: the right thumb will play something low, strong, and supportive while the left thumb plays a dancing melody. Ultimately, I’d like you to be able to improvise on the left side. This exercise lays the foundation for the left thumb dancing.        

An Overview of a 13 Part Series of Tips for the African-Tuned Karimba Up and down the pentatonic scale Most karimba music gets two or more different musical lines going at once. Keeping these two different musical lines going is a bit like juggling. Sometimes each thumb takes on a separate musical line, and sometimes the thumbs take on both themes, with one or two musical lines bouncing back and forth between the two thumbs. In this series of tips, I show you a very simple way of thinking about the karimba that will give you access to some basic improvisational skills. For this purpose, we are going to approach