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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

We have arrived at the right thumb part Learn this right thumb part – we will use it a lot! Each of these two-note chords is played with the right thumb and right index finger. In going from one chord to the next, you only move the thumb or the index finger, not both. You only ever move by one tine. See the pattern? The right finger usually stays on A, but shifts to G# on the last measure. The right thumb (ie, the left note) usually stays on E, but shifts to F# on the second measure. This somewhat lopsided pattern makes a wonderful chord progression common in both

A left thumb suggestion A suggestion for a left thumb part The goal here is for you to play the right thumb’s two-note chord part more or less as written, and to invent your own left thumb part. You may have already been successful with this, or you might feel you have no clue of what to do. If the latter is true, here is a left thumb suggestion for you. Notice how the left thumb and right thumb do not overlap. The left thumb plays the same part in measures 1, 2, and 3. In going from the high E to the middle A on the left side, you

Another left thumb suggestion, same right thumb pattern Another left thumb suggestion 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 the type of thing your left thumb could do. The first three measures are almost the same for the left thumb – measure 1 goes up the scale fragment, measure 2 goes down the scale fragment, and measure 3 goes back up. Measure 4 on the left is different, emphasizing B as the first and last note of the little phrase. Again, B is a good