It has no standard pitch, and that is the point
Every other instrument on this site is tuned to something outside itself. A guitar is tuned to E, a kalimba is stamped C at the factory, a handpan has its scale hammered into the steel before it is sold. An mbira dzavadzimu is not. Its tunings are named sets of intervals, and they refer to relative relationships rather than to absolute pitches. They vary from family to family and from maker to maker. An instrument is tuned to itself, and instruments meant to be played together are tuned to each other rather than to a fork.
So the pitches on this page are written at an arbitrary C, purely so the intervals can be named and so the notation has somewhere to sit. No mbira is expected to match them, and the reference-pitch control under the board is not a detune knob — it is the honest form of the question “what pitch is this instrument at?”, which for an mbira only you can answer. Slide it until the board matches the one in your hands. Nothing else changes when you do: the intervals, the key names and the tabs stay exactly where they were, because what moved is the instrument and not the music.
This is also why there is no key selector. Transposing an instrument that was never at concert pitch would be a control that means nothing.
Three manuals, and why they overlap
The 22 keys are in three ranks, two under the left thumb and one under the right, and each is numbered outward from the middle of the board:
- B1–B7, the bass manual. The lowest register and the longest keys. B1 is the lowest note on the instrument. B7 is the odd one out — the only bass key in the middle octave — and it sits at the far left.
- L1–L7, the upper left manual. The middle register, interleaved with the bass keys across the left half of the board, which is why long and short alternate as you look across it. Both left manuals are played by striking down with the left thumb.
- R1–R8, the right manual. The highest register. The right thumb strikes the first three downward; the index finger plucks the rest upward from below, with the little finger hooked through the hole in the soundboard to hold the instrument steady.
The manuals do not stack end to end — they overlap, and the overlap is the instrument. R2 and R3 sound exactly the same pitches as L6 and L7. R1 sits in the middle register with the L manual rather than with the rest of its own rank. The whole range covers three octaves, and most notes in the middle of it exist in more than one place. Which place you play a note from decides what your other thumb can reach next, and that is most of what mbira technique is.
The order inside a manual is not pitch order either. L1 and L2 are neighbours on the board and a fifth apart; L3 and L4 are neighbours and a third apart; B1–B2 and B6–B7 are both thirds. Those leaps are placed under adjacent keys deliberately, because they are the ones that keep occurring in the music — and it means a run up the scale zig-zags across the board rather than travelling along it.
The buzz is not an effect
Machachara — bottle caps, shells or beads — are nailed to the soundboard and rattle whenever it moves. They are on the instrument permanently; there is no version of a traditional mbira dzavadzimu with the buzz switched off, and Shona players describe it as part of the note rather than as something added to it. It is loudest in the bass, because the long keys move the board hardest, which is why the toggle changes the bottom manual far more than the top one.
The toggle exists for one reason: if you are learning where the keys are, an hour without the rattle is easier. It is on by default because that is how the instrument comes. If you own a modern board kalimba and it buzzes, that is a different situation entirely and usually a fault — why a kalimba buzzes and how to stop it covers it.
The last piece of an mbira’s real sound is not modelled here at all: in performance the instrument sits inside a deze, a gourd resonator most of a metre across, which is what makes it loud enough to carry. The voice on this page includes the body resonance a deze adds, but a room mic on a real one is a bigger, rougher sound than anything a browser is going to produce.
Four tunings, same keys
The chip row is the tuning, not the size. Nyamaropa is the default and by some distance the most common in Zimbabwe; it approximates Mixolydian, a major scale with a lowered seventh. Dambatsoko approximates Ionian — the plain major scale, so the seventh is the note that separates the two. Katsanzaira approximates Dorian, and Mavembe (also called Gandanga) approximates Phrygian and is the darkest of the four.
Switch between them and not one key moves: the layout, the numbering and the manuals are identical, and only the intervals change. That is precisely what happens when a real mbira is retuned, because retuning is done to the keys in place.
“Approximates” is doing real work in every sentence above. A real mbira is not in equal temperament and does not intend to be; its thirds and sevenths sit between the Western ones, and a good instrument’s tuning is a judgement made by ear rather than a table. Twelve-tone versions of these four modes are the closest this page can honestly get, and they are labelled as approximations rather than presented as the tunings themselves.
If you came here for a thumb piano
You may want the other one. A modern kalimba is a single rank of tines, factory-tuned to a Western major scale at concert pitch, laid out alternating outward from a long centre tine, and it is what every numbered tab online is written for — 7, 8, 10, 17 and 21-key sizes are all playable on that page. It is the instrument to start on if you want to play melodies from tabs today.
The two are genuinely related. A single key is the same object on both instruments: a steel bar clamped at a bridge and free at the tip, which is why both have the bright inharmonic ping on the attack, and why tuning both means tapping a key along its bridge with a hammer rather than turning anything. If yours has drifted, the kalimba tuner handles that adjustment — and the caution on that page applies twice over here, because an mbira key moves further than you expect and there is no chart to put it back to.
Playing it
Tap any key, or drag along a manual to run through it. On a keyboard the letters printed on the keys are the keys to press, running left to right across the board. The song library below is Western public-domain melody, which is a long way from what this instrument is for — mbira repertoire is cyclic interlocking parts, kushaura and kutsinhira, played by two musicians against each other, and no melody-and-tab page teaches that. The songs are here to give you something to aim at while you learn where the keys are.
What key is an mbira dzavadzimu in?
None, and that is not a dodge. An mbira has no standard pitch: its tunings are named sets of intervals that vary from family to family and describe the relationships between an instrument’s own keys rather than any absolute pitch. Makers tune each instrument to itself, and instruments meant to play together are tuned to each other. Two mbira both correctly in Nyamaropa can sit several semitones apart, and neither is out of tune. This page writes the intervals at C so they can be named at all, and gives you a reference-pitch control to slide the whole instrument to wherever yours actually is.
What is Nyamaropa tuning?
The most widespread mbira tuning in Zimbabwe, and the default here. It approximates the Western Mixolydian mode — a major scale with a lowered seventh — and “approximates” is the important word: a real mbira is not in equal temperament, and its thirds and sevenths sit between the Western ones. Three other traditional tunings are on the chip row: Dambatsoko approximates Ionian, Katsanzaira approximates Dorian, and Mavembe (also called Gandanga) approximates Phrygian. Retuning does not move a single key on the board.
Why are the keys labelled B1, L4, R6 instead of numbers 1 to 7?
Because that is what mbira players call them. Each key is named by its manual and its position: B for the bass manual, L for the upper left, R for the right, numbered outward from the middle of the board. Every mbira score and every teacher uses this, so a tab you find elsewhere will match the labels here. Scale degrees would also not work — the lowered seventh in Nyamaropa is not a degree of the major scale that kalimba tab notation is built on, so three of the twenty-two keys would have no number at all.
Why does the same note appear twice on the board?
Because it does on the instrument. R2 and R3 sound exactly the same pitches as L6 and L7 — a unison across two manuals, reachable by two different thumbs — and the three manuals overlap in pitch generally rather than stacking end to end. That overlap is the technique: which of the available places you play a note from decides which hand is free and what your other thumb can reach next. A layout that removed the duplicates would be tidier and would no longer be an mbira.
What is the buzzing sound?
Machachara — bottle caps, shells or beads nailed to the soundboard, which rattle whenever the board moves. It is not an effect and not a fault. On a real mbira dzavadzimu they are attached permanently and buzz on every note, and Shona players treat the buzz as part of the sound rather than as something on top of it. The toggle is there because someone learning where the keys are can reasonably want them quiet for an hour, not because the buzz is optional on the instrument.
Is an mbira the same as a kalimba?
They are related and they are not the same instrument. Both are lamellophones — steel keys clamped at a bridge, plucked with the thumbs — and the physics of a single key is identical. But a modern kalimba is one rank of tines factory-tuned to a Western major scale at concert pitch, laid out alternating outward from a long centre tine. An mbira dzavadzimu is 22 to 28 hand-forged keys across three manuals, tuned to intervals rather than pitches, with the buzz attached. If you arrived here looking for a thumb piano with numbered tines and tabs, the kalimba is the one you want.
Why do so few of the songs work on it?
Because the song library is written in the major scale and Nyamaropa is not it. Every melody is offered only if every note it needs genuinely exists on the instrument you have selected, and nothing is transposed to fake a fit — so a tune that leans on the major seventh is not available in Nyamaropa and appears the moment you switch to Dambatsoko. Katsanzaira and Mavembe offer nothing at all, because both lower the third as well and a major-key melody has nowhere to go on them. That is the filter doing its job rather than a gap. It is also worth saying plainly that mbira repertoire is not melody-and-accompaniment: the real music is interlocking cyclic parts, kushaura and kutsinhira, which this page does not teach.