Tuning a kalimba with the hammer

A kalimba goes out of tune slowly, and most owners never touch it. When it does drift, fixing it takes a small hammer and about ten minutes, and the only thing standing between you and doing it is that the process sounds more alarming than it is.

The one rule

A tine sounds higher when the free part is shorter, and lower when it is longer. So:

Tap the tine further in to raise the pitch. Tap it out to lower it.

That is the whole mechanism. There is no screw, no peg, no tension. You are changing the length of a vibrating bar.

What you need

The hammer that came in the box, and a tuner. Any chromatic tuner app will do, and the free ones are fine for this. Work somewhere quiet, because a kalimba is not loud and phone tuners are easily confused.

Do not use a heavier hammer because it seems more effective. You want small taps you can undo, not one decisive blow.

The method

Play one tine and read the tuner. Note whether it is sharp or flat, and by how much.

Rest the kalimba on a firm surface, tine side up, and hold it steady. Tap the end of the tine gently, in the direction you need. Very gently. The first tap should barely move it.

Play it again and read the tuner again. Repeat until it lands. Then move on to the next tine.

Here is a standard C board's first octave to check against, if you want to hear the target rather than only read a needle:

• C4
• D4
• E4
• F4
• G4
• A4
• B4
• C5

The mistakes

Hitting too hard. The commonest one by a distance. A big tap sends the tine well past where you wanted, and now you have to bring it back, and you overshoot again. Small taps converge, big ones oscillate.

Tuning the whole board at once. Do one tine, finish it, move on. Working across all seventeen a little at a time means you lose track of what you have already fixed.

Trusting a tuner in a noisy room. A phone tuner will happily read the fridge. If the reading jumps around, the problem is usually the room.

Chasing perfect. Within a few cents is fine. A kalimba is a resonant piece of wood with steel bars nailed to it, not a laboratory instrument, and it will drift a little with temperature anyway.

Changing the key on purpose

You can retune a whole board up or down, and people do. Moving every tine by the same amount turns a C kalimba into a D one, or a B flat one.

It is more work than it sounds, because the tines are cut for a range and pushing them a long way from it makes them buzz or go dead. A semitone or two either way is realistic. Trying to move a board a fourth is not.

Since kalimba tab uses scale degrees rather than note names, retuning does not invalidate any of your music. The tab plays the same tune in the new key without a single change.

When it is not tuning

A buzzing tine is usually not a tuning problem. It is a tine sitting slightly crooked against the bridge, or a hairline burr on the edge, or dust under the bar. Straighten it, or wipe underneath it, before you reach for the hammer.

A tine that sounds dead rather than buzzy is often just pressed too far in. Tapping it back out a fraction usually brings the ring back, and then you retune it.