How to Tune Your Kalimba with a Tuning Hammer

Carved Culture

In this video, I show you an easier way to tune your coconut thumb piano kalimba using a tuning hammer—perfect for those who found manual tuning painful. You'll use the free app Tuner Pitched to help match each note, one by one, to its correct pitch. If you're a beginner, tuning is the first essential skill to learn before playing songs. While there are various tuning methods, this is the one I personally use, and the notes should be tuned from left to right as follows: G, A, B, D, F, C, E.  Explore our collection of kalimbas here: https://www.carvedculture.co.uk/collections/thumb-pianos

Transcript

00:00Hey everyone, I hope you're having a wonderful day.

00:03A few months ago I made a video showing you how to tune your coconut thumb piano and a

00:09few people said that it hurt their fingers when tuning it and so today I just wanted

00:14to show you a different way to tune it using a tuning hammer.

00:19So the first thing you'll want to do is download a tuning app called Tuna Pitched.

00:24When you make a sound it figures out what note it is that you're playing and it guides

00:28you to get the right notes.

00:30My coconut thumb piano is not in tune but I will be tuning it and I'll show you exactly

00:34how to do it.

00:35You might want to take a little note.

00:36So I tune this one to G, this one to A, this one to B, this one to D, this one to F, this

00:50one to C and finally this one to E.

00:53Right, so now we're going to tune our kalimba and I just want to say that I do prefer to

01:01do it by hand.

01:02I find it much easier because this tool, although it's designed as a tuning hammer, it doesn't

01:09really get in the places that you need it to very well and it's very hard to hit each

01:15time the right amount to get it in tune.

01:18And if you do tune it too far ahead, you can't always get it in the little gaps.

01:23This isn't a very good tool, I wouldn't really recommend it.

01:25But for the sake of this video, we are going to be using it.

01:28So our first note, we're going to tune this to G.

01:33That's already G, that's brilliant.

01:35Moving on, this is going to be A.

01:36Right, so it's coming up as G sharp.

01:40So I'm going to tap it with the tuning hammer.

01:44There we go, that's A.

01:54Next we're going to go to B.

02:00So that's coming up as C and there's no way that I can move that back with this tuning

02:05hammer.

02:06So I'm going to have to do it by hand.

02:10So I'll come back a little bit.

02:12So it's coming up as A, so I can hit it forward with this.

02:20A sharp, D sharp, so I have to come back again.

02:33This is why I think it's easier with the hand because you have much more control.

02:39B, there you go.

02:45Next one, we're going to go D. So that's D sharp, so we can't get into that gap again.

02:52So we're going to just pull it back with our hand.

02:54And it does hurt your hand.

02:55Look, you can see my finger's marked, but it is much easier to do like this.

03:01D. Next one's F. So that's pretty much in tune already.

03:09You just need to fine tune, just go a little bit forward.

03:14There you go, that's perfect spot on.

03:17And then next we're going to go C. So that's C sharp, I need to come back a little bit after

03:23it by hand.

03:27And then E. Yeah, the E's tuned to five, so it's really high, I've done a really high E

03:32here.

03:33So with the E, I just need to move it back a bit to the E on the lower scale.

03:41It sounds quite cool when you hit it.

03:46So that's still coming up as five, so.

03:51I think it's likely that you could damage your instrument with this hammer.

04:05That's coming up as D, so turn it forward.

04:12And there we go, that's the instrument in tune.

04:19So just to show you, I'm going to play classic song.

04:33So that's how to tune your coconut thumb piano with a tuning hammer.

04:38And if you have any other video suggestions, then please let me know in the comments section.

04:42I would love to take a look.

04:44And if you liked that video, then please give it a big thumbs up and subscribe.

04:48And I will see you soon.

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