This new model was specially designed with smaller hands in mind! The B17-Mini is more easily playable for children, young adults, and anyone with a smaller-sized hand.
Another fun bonus of the B-17 Mini is that the metal tines are mounted more closely together. This makes it easier to play glissandos: a musical term which means "a continuous slide upward or downward between two or more notes". You can take your thumbs and run them in a sweeping motion up or down, producing with ease this delightful sound effect where the notes blend seamlessly into each other.
This new B17-Mini Kalimba has the exact same musical layout and tuning of the larger B17 Kalimba (original): made from a beautiful block of American Cherry wood upon which metal tines fan out to form two-and-a-half octaves of the *C-Major diatonic scale.
This kalimba starts with the bottom root note in the middle then alternates back and forth between the left and right sides played by the thumbs building up the scale from the inside opening out to the sides of the instrument.
Because of this special layout, chord triads are located adjacent to each other, making different chords easy to see and therefore song accompaniment easily learnable and playable. It also comes with little "chord magnets" that allow you to mark the chords you want to play!
Kalimbas are metal-tined instruments which originated in southern Africa and which can be found there in countless variations.
Our Kalimba B17 C-major is meticulously hand-crafted out of solid American black cherry wood. The surfaces is treated and polished with natural oils and waxes. The B17 is ideal for improvisation and intuitive playing.
Scale C-major: c d e f g a h C D E F G A H C
A C-major scale consist of 7 notes. The 17 note Kalimba has 2 sets of C with an octave in-between plus another C an octave higher.
If you look at the Diagram in the second Ocatve the numbers are given a dot to distinguish them. so 1. 2. 3. and so on. IN the third octave, the three highest notes of our Kalimba we use the: after the number. 1: 2: 3:.
Playing the scale of C-major:
Start with the middle, longest tine and with your right thumb pluck it, alternating with your left thumb, thus working your way to the outer tines. You will hear the C major scale played over two and a third octave.
In the tablature the notes for the left hand are at the top and for the right hand at the bottom. The tablature is shown directly above the notation.
This kind of Kalimba tablature is used by Conny Sommer in his tutorials about the B17.
For the sake of clarity we have marked the tines with two different kind of markings.
The single horizontal line on three of the tines indicates the keynote of the C-major tuning. the low , the middle and the high C. The double crossbar indicates the tone H. This allows the player to visually orientate themselves with larger number of tines.
We include a booklet with the purchase of the B17 that gives you some song samples and shows you a couple of playing techniques.
We also made a video to show you how to work with the included magnets to mark the chords when you are playing.
