LET IT FLY!

Performance by Bill WesleyThe four octave MELODY ARRAY MBIRA with thirty Octave courses in order of series of semitones from left to right. No processing is being used, that's just the acoustic sound plus a little added bass from the amp.This mbiras semitones are tuned one cent flat of 12 egual so the notes of the octave course to the furthest right are flat from 12 equal by 15 cents and the notes of the octave courses on the furthest left are sharp by 15 cents from 12 equal.This makes all the major intervals more flat and all the minor intervals more sharp which gives the result a special emotional affect.Because of this tuning the player has 30 tones per octave so a choice of four different ways of tuning every interval, a higher and a lower version differing by 12 cents, plus a sharper or a flatter version also differing by 12 cents.A player can be very expressive and bend chords and melodies in many subtle ways to make motifs especially evocative and beautiful.Because you touch a tine to make it stop rests can be very exact. The Melody array mbira outlay makes elaborate chromatic riffs that sound impossible really easy to perform.Each hand can do its own motif, but then the two motifs combine to form a third surprising motif much as happens with bands, but in this case its between a single players two hands.Consider how hard it would be to pull off some of these licks by other means, my arms are hardly moving, an a guitar bass or keyboard I'd be thrashing my arms to the right and left to do similar licks, but the use of Y axis aligned octave courses saves the player the trouble so they can focus on the music instead of all the calisthenics
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[@trueessence13]

Super cool ! I love this ! 🥰

[@unamoahc]

тУНЬ ТУНЬ ТИРЕ ЛАТУНЬ=)))))))))))

[@timmiller1]

What a clever instrument! And beautifully played. I’d wager you could get some views if you played the Harry Potter theme on it.

[@billwesley]

Imogen Heap used the array mbira for this project: genius.com/albums/Imogen-heap/The-music-of-harry-potter-and-the-cursed-child-parts-one-and-two And you can find a lot of covers here: www.youtube.com/@puppetpatti

[@timmiller1]

@@billwesley ah, so it’s a commonly occurring idea. Thanks for the resources.

[@billwesley]

@@timmiller1 Actually I forgot that this is the melody array mbira, these other pieces in the links were all done on the harmony array mbira which makes chords easier to deal with, but not melody, this one makes melody easier to deal with but not chords. Only a few people play one of these. A person can get very chromatic with one of these, exotic leads in exotic scales are easy to pull off.