Info

Just retuning one of the A tines down to G increases the reach of the Sansula’s standard tuning Go to product page for “Kalimba Doctor Tuning” Modifying one note won’t totally transform the sansula, but it will alter, and in this case, extend the musical palette available to the instrument. And if you are going to take the plunge and experiment with alternative tunings for the first time, you should start with something easy. This tuning only requires retuning one tine by a whole step.  It is also easy to get back to the original tuning, though I don’t think you’d want to – I myself prefer to have that G than

Exactly how does one go about retuning a sansula? Learn about retuning your sansula When you think of retuning, you may envision tuning hammers, tuning prongs, and pliers, and people pushing and grunting, but if you are serious about retuning your sansula, I have one little piece of information that will save you a lot of time and frustration. And we also hook you up with a lot of kalimba tuning resources! Before I get too deep into the mechanics of retuning your sansula, just remember that under the “Kalimba Doctor” category in our shop, we offer a kalimba/sansula retuning service.  If you mess it up badly, you can send

Here are some of the tunings – many of them complete with sound recordings! Visit the Kalimba Doctor page to get your kalimba retuned Are you still wondering why the big fuss over all those different sansula tunings? This tip clarifies that very question.  The differences among the tunings are made clear, with rich descriptions of how I perceive the music they make. And in addition, you can listen to and watch different tunings in action in the video below, which is a YouTube Playlist containing 7 separate short demonstrations.     Standard A minor (Ake-bono-like) tuning:  This original tuning was part my initial attraction to the sansula – the tuning was

Changing the tuning can transform the music the sansula plays Go to product page for “Kalimba Doctor Tuning” Kalimba Magic started making the first alternative sansula tunings many years ago, and we are the only people to have made instructional materials for the sansula and its alternative tunings. This series of tips is an overview of Kalimba Magic’s sansula tunings and related instructional materials. Before we launch into several alternative tunings, it only seems fair that I explain why anyone would even want to try an alternative tuning on their sansula. In the previous tip, you saw that you could make good music by twiddling your thumbs in a strictly

This ground-breaking book inspired thousands Go to product page for “Playing the Sansula” Kalimba Magic started making the first alternative sansula tunings many years ago, and we are the only people to have made instructional materials for the sansula and its alternative tunings. This series of tips is an overview of Kalimba Magic’s sansula tunings and related instructional materials. This is a good example of the music played easily on the sansula in standard A minor tuning – it is one of the lessons from the book “Playing the Sansula”, which mostly covers the standard tuning. The media player at the bottom of the article will play a sound recording

The standard A minor tuning requires almost no effort and sounds great Renaissance Sansula product page Kalimba Magic started making the first alternative sansula tunings many years ago, and we are the only people to have made instructional materials for the sansula and its alternative tunings. This series of tips is an overview of Kalimba Magic’s sansula tunings and related instructional materials.  To gain some perspective, we take a close look at where the Sansula started – the standard A minor tuning. The notes of the sansula in standard tuning are shown on the left, and the roles these notes play is indicated in the numbers on the right.  The

All sansulas have nine tines, four of them bent upward Renaissance Sansula product page Kalimba Magic started making the first alternative sansula tunings many years ago, and we are the only people to have made instructional materials for the sansula and its alternative tunings. This series of tips is an overview of Kalimba Magic’s sansula tunings and related instructional materials.  We start our series of tips with the nuanced question: “What is a sansula?” This used to be a much simpler question. When Peter Hokema invented the sansula, it had four main properties: it was a 9-note kalimba with four of the tines bent upward into a second row; the kalimba was

Left thumb dancing in the upper notes Our objective with these lessons is to give you the tools, understanding, and confidence to improvise with your left thumb while the right thumb “holds down the fort”. Here is another suggestion for what your left thumb can do – dance in the upper row notes, and between the upper and lower row notes. Again, please try your own left thumb variations played along with the written right thumb part.                      

Starting to branch out You are by no means confined to exactly what we have written down. You can change it up in a thousand different ways to make it your own. Here is a very simple example: instead of playing the chord in each measure twice, this one plays each chord only once, on the opening beat of each measure. Furthermore, the left thumb plays with the right thumb on the opening chords. This complexity is somewhat compensated for by the fact that the right side is doing the same pattern three out of four times.