What makes the song a "song" is often just a consistency between the notes played across the patterns – mbira tunings and keys are usually named after the traditional pieces which use the same notes. What exactly makes a mbira "song" is open to interpretation, as no composition is a fixed structure – but rather a set of subtly changing musical ideas weaving in and out of each other, which vary from performance to performance and tradition to tradition. In the modern canon, Konono's Paradiso is pretty ace. What's the best ever thumb piano song? Nhemamusasa is regarded as being one of the classic traditional song-patterns. When you add more players, and different patterns cycling in and out of phase with each other, you get a warm, intricate patter of sound. Why are they classic? Something odd happens when someone is playing a thumb piano skilfully – the separate tones of the stroked tines start intermingling and overlapping, making it sound like an orchestra. The mbira is the national instrument of Zimbabwe, where it holds an important place in all spiritual, political and artistic matters of the Shona people – so most people belonging to that culture will have some working knowledge of the instrument since childhood, even if they aren't musicians themselves. Where do they come from? The first recorded instance of thumb pianos dates back to the 16th century, but it's accepted that they've been around a hell of a lot longer than that. Time signatures are ambiguous (mbira pieces often seem to merge 3/4 and 4/4 time) and are tricky to transcribe as the traditional instruments would often not be created to specific tunings or scales, and would vary in frequencies from mbira to mbira. Typically a composition will consist of 48 beats, organised into four phrases of 12 beats. How do they work? Traditional mbira music is cycles of polyrhythmic, interlocking patterns.
![tiny piano name tiny piano name](https://www.schoolofcomposition.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Can-you-play-piano-with-small-hands-and-short-fingers-thumbnail.jpg)
The act that has transcended the usual "world music" western ghettoisation of indigenous musics though are the brilliant Konono No 1, whose grids of homemade electric likembé, amplified through buzzing, distorted megaphones, almost verge on ancient, African techno – the Congolese group are more likely to be found at All Tomorrow's Parties than Womad. In western rock, pop and jazz, Earth, Wind, & Fire, Jens Lekman, Imogen Heap, Björk, King Crimson and Pharoah Sanders have sprinkled thumb pianos on their work. Who uses them? Ephat Mujuru, Garikayi Tirikoti and Stella Chiweshe are three of the biggest names in 20th-century mbira. Usually, thumb piano refers to either the mbira or its more modernised variant, the kalimba. What are they? "Thumb piano" is a generic, westernised name for a range of different sub-Saharan lamellophones (instruments played by plucking tuned fixed metal tines or keys).