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What materials do you need to make a kalimba?

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What materials do you need to make a kalimba?

Materials

  1. Thin plywood.
  2. Wooden board, or 5mm plywood.
  3. Hardwood, such as walnut.
  4. Brass rod stock.
  5. Spring steel strip, like from a metal rake or drain cleaning strip.
  6. Varnish.
  7. Screws & threaded inserts.
  8. Miscellaneous boards, tube, mounting hardware, glue, etc.

What metal is used for Kalimba?

What is the best metal for Kalimba Tines? Unplated steel ore is going to provide the best resonance for a Kalimba with less material additions for appearance purposes. The tone is also clearer and they look more authentic in terms of relation to their African heritage and predecessors.

What are the parts of a kalimba?

Parts of Kalimba

  • Soundboard / Body. Let us start with the biggest part, the body.
  • Sound Hole. This is the parts of Kalimba that may or may not exist depending on the model.
  • Tines. Some called these keys or tongue but the most popular is tines.
  • Bridge and Backstop.
  • Saddle and Z-Bracket.
  • Head and Foot.

What is the best wood for Kalimba?

Mahogany, acacia koa, spruce, sandalwood, and bamboo – these are the common materials used in making kalimbas. Mahogany: beautiful wood grain, suitable for varnish or red gradient painting; sufficient resonance and warm timbre, sound lasts long.

Which is better acrylic or wood Kalimba?

Acrylic kalimbas have a warmer, smoother sound that resembles the tone of a music box. These kalimbas are best suited for softer songs, such as lullabies. Wood kalimbas, on the other hand, sound a bit richer and brighter. Wood kalimbas are often used to play pop music.

Are you supposed to cover the holes in a kalimba?

There are two sound holes on the back of the Hugh Tracey kalimbas, or on the sides of the Goshen box kalimbas and the Catania gourd kalimbas. When you cover and uncover these sound holes, you will get a vibrato effect, changing the tonal properties of the notes you are playing.

What are the metal parts of Kalimba called?

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: The basic Kalimba is a modern mbira with a soundbox with metal keys or tongues (called lamellas) attached on the top. The keys or tongues are sometimes made from cane. The soundbox is Kyatt wood (an African hardwood), with keys or tongues made out of European spring steel.

What is an easy simple musical instrument to make?

Here we’ve got 10 DIY instruments you can make at home with your kids that can help teach them basic musical concepts at an early age.

  1. Harmonica/Pan Flute.
  2. Can Drums.
  3. Tambourine.
  4. Xylophone.
  5. Rainstick.
  6. Spoon Maracas.
  7. Shoe Box Guitar.
  8. Cardboard Trumpet.

What do you use to make a kalimba?

Kalimbas are a traditional folk instrument of Western African which use metal keys of varying lengths to make different sounds. This is a far simpler form of the kalimba using cardboard and bobby pins that can be made in minutes.

Do you need a hole for a kalimba?

For the body, which is a resonance chamber, to actually help to make the kalimba sound nice it needs a hole to let out the sound. Without a hole the kalimba will sound quite muffled. If all you want is a round hole you can use a forstner bit, or a small hole saw, to cut out a hole.

Do you need a grounding bar for a kalimba?

They need to sit flush, or slightly below, the surface of the wood. To hold down pressure on the tines we need one more item, a rod mounted on top of the grounding bar, using two screws which passes through the rod, the bar and down into the threaded inserts in the body of the kalimba.