Hello /mu/. I bought this from a store the other day and I love the way it sounds. Does anybody know what it's called, and the correct way to play it/tune it?
I forget what it's called. You can tune by pulling the prongs in or out and tightening the thing with a screwdriver. You just play it with your thumbs. Limited to simple melodies but it's a nice sound.
Kalimba it's the name, I think
A lamellophone (also lamellaphone or linguaphone, from the Latin root lingua meaning "tongue", i.e., a long thin plate that is fixed only at one end) is any of a family of musical instruments.
The name comes from the Latin word "lamella" for "plate" and the Greek root "phonos" for "sound". The name derives from the way the sound is produced: the instrument has a series of thin plates, or "tongues", each of which is fixed at one end and has the other end free. When the musician depresses the free end of a plate with a finger or fingernail, and then allows the finger to slip off, the released plate vibrates.
>>64041563
Thanks!
>>64041481
Did you buy that from the zoo?
>>64041481
I believe it's called a thumb piano or something like that
>>64041737
No. Lol.
This one of my favorite thumb piano things, from Bela Fleck's africa travelogue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jl4IOSLX-o
Also I was thinking a little bit ago about putting one of them on a guitar body and I found one of the Candyrat that's already done it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo9kGHYn_bI
Pretty badass. I think I'm going to try making a cigar box guitar with built-in thumb piano and see what I can do with it. I wonder if I screw the bridge of the guitar over the crossbar that holds the tongues on the kalimba, if I can get the strings to ring out just by plucking one of the tongues. Could be some cool sounds that way.
>>64041481
its called various things. A kalimba, thumb piano, mbira.
>>64041481
kalimba, has been used very successfully in pop songs