Hokema B17 Kalimba in C Major: A Most Beautiful Sound!

[@brightantwerp]

I just got mine. The sound of the Hokema kalimba is just the most beautiful.

[@didgeproject]

Indeed it is!

[@brightantwerp]

@@hannahem8604 Hi! The metal bridge is 14cm, the golden ones 13cm.

[@JohnRAllen]

I purchased the b17 today after I watched your video and a few others. Your review was so well done and I loved how you spoke to music's healing effects. Thank you very much. Warm regards, John

[@didgeproject]

Happy you found us. Thanks so much for the donation! Glad we could be of service.

[@pablomyerspy]

I think this is one of the best kalimba. It sounds so perfect.

[@SamDechenneMusic]

Ya Adrian! Cool to randomly find you on this rabbit hole of Didgeridoo videos I'm currently in...

[@AdrianDiMatteo]

Hi! Nice 😂

[@okonamaroko9419]

Well explained. Thank you

[@siennaprice1351]

I’m a musician. I enjoy so many instruments. I got my first hollow box kalimba for Christmas. I’m loving it for so many reasons. I noticed with the kalimba you demonstrated with in this video, there’s sustain in the high notes. Unlike the hollow box kalimbas, the sustain doesn’t happen on the last 2 notes at the end of the kalimba.

[@GabrielVelasco]

Great sounding kalimba. You can find lots of vids on kalimbas being played in more traditional styles and in other ways so that you can get an idea of other things this great instrument is capable of. In some ways it can be played similarly to a hand pan or steel tongue drum because it's diatonic but can be retuned to lots of scales, the scale alternates from left to right, and it lends itself very well to playing rhythmic patterns. I don't know if it comes with this kalimba, but Hokema makes and sells a tuning tool for kalimbas which makes retuning a lot easier. If you do decide to retune the kalimba to match some other diatonic instrument in your collection, like a hand pan or steel slit tongue drum, you should not retune all of the tines. Only tune the appropriate accidentals. For instance, if you want to play in G, don't tune the whole thing down to a G. Instead, just tune your Fs to F#. If you want to play in F, don't tune the whole thing up to F. Instead, just tune your Bs to Bb. It might be really tempting to tune everything down one step to play in D, and you MIGHT be able to do that with this kalimba and not end up with some buzzing and dead notes, but it's better to first try to just tune your Fs to F# and your Cs to a C#, then see how that works. That's likely to work better on this kalimba because you have three octaves (!), so you will always have at least one complete scale in the middle. Obviously, if you want to tune to a C# or a B, you'll end up tuning everything up or down, but you probably don't want to go more than a whole step (key of D or Bb) in either direction for ALL of the tines. I could be wrong with this one, but with other kalimbas the lengths of the springs seem to be precisely calculated for the note they are trying to produce and the pressure on them. Another nice thing about having so many octaves is that you can tune one or two octaves in one key and the other one or two in another key so that you can handle key changes with your kalimba! Nice. As for pentatonic and hexatonic scales - just play them. In other words, just skip the notes that aren't included in the scale. Some "flavorful" scales, which are very popular on hand pans and steel slit tongue drums, extend more than one octave and one note in the second octave might be different from what it was in the first octave. You can just tune that "flavor" note in the second octave and leave the first one alone.

[@didgeproject]

Thank you so much for this informative response. Lots of great info here in this comment. Please feel free to comment on any of our other videos as you have a lot of useful information to share!

[@JohnRAllen]

Thanks!

[@jezuswizardspatula5804]

I gotta get one