Kalimba: seventeen keys to tap
A kalimba to play in your browser, all seventeen keys with their numbers, how to read the dots and how to tune it – with real kalimba sound.
Tap to play
Tap a key to hear it, or slide your finger across several. The buttons above switch between three tunings.
The kalimba is a thumb piano: metal keys, or tines, over a wooden body, plucked with both thumbs. Most have seventeen keys tuned to C major — the same notes as the white keys of a piano, across a little over two octaves.
What takes getting used to is the order. The lowest key sits in the middle, and the notes climb outwards, alternating left and right. Going from one note to the next higher one always means switching sides — which is exactly why neighbouring keys on one side are a third apart, and three of them side by side make a triad.
The seventeen keys
On most kalimbas every key is engraved: a number for the step of the scale and dots above it for the octave. One is the home note, seven the note just below the next one; one dot means an octave higher, two dots two octaves.
The table reads the keys from left to right, the way they lie in front of you.
| Number | Note | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | D | left |
| 7 | B | left |
| 5 | G | left |
| 3 | E | left |
| 1 | C | left |
| 6 | A | left |
| 4 | F | left |
| 2 | D | left |
| 1 | C | middle |
| 3 | E | right |
| 5 | G | right |
| 7 | B | right |
| 2 | D | right |
| 4 | F | right |
| 6 | A | right |
| 1 | C | right |
| 3 | E | right |
How to read kalimba tabs
Kalimba music is usually written in numbers rather than on a staff — the same number notation used for songs and choir parts in China and Indonesia. Each number is a key, and the marks around it tell you how long it rings.
Here are the first two bars of a nursery rhyme twice: on the staff above, in numbers below. Every note has its number, every bar its line.
1155665–
What the marks mean
- 5A number on its own rings for one beat.
- 5–Each dash after it holds it one beat longer.
- 5Underlined once: half a beat.
- 5Underlined twice: a quarter of a beat.
- 5A dot after it makes it half as long again.
- 5Each dot above raises it by an octave.
- 0Zero is a rest.
- 55An arc joins two equal numbers: the second is not plucked again.
- 53Two numbers stacked are plucked together.
Tuning the kalimba
Each tine is tuned by its length. Tap it with the tuning hammer so that it comes out further from under the bridge, and it gets longer and sounds lower; tap it back in, and it gets shorter and sounds higher. Small steps are enough.
The easiest way is with a tuner: the Tuner shows whether a tine is sharp or flat.
Retuning to another key
A kalimba in C major only plays the seven notes of C major. For a different key, individual tines are moved by a semitone — two for G major, two for F major. The table shows which ones, and the kalimba above can be retuned the same way, so you can hear the difference.
A minor needs no change at all: it has the same seven notes as C major and simply starts on six.
| Key | Tines | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| G major | 44 | a semitone higher |
| F major | 77 | a semitone lower |
Songs to play
The public-domain songs and hymns that fit the seventeen keys without a single foreign note are written out in numbers on a page of their own, each one to listen to: Kalimba tabs.
Related
The same pieces on the staff, with chords: Pieces. How to read sheet music: How to read sheet music. And why one to seven are the same as the syllables of solfège: Solfège, do re mi.
Anotona does this for you
Photograph a page of sheet music or play the melody — Anotona finds the key, engraves the notes and transposes them into any other. Free.
See AnotonaEvery note on this page is computed, not typed in — following the rule that also makes F# major spell its seventh degree E#, not F.