The Bastl Kalimba is a wild synth that thinks it’s a thumb piano
Make no mistake, the Bastl Kalimba is a synthesizer, you just play it like a kalimba. His teeth don’t really make much noise. There’s an internal mic you can integrate for a bit of acoustic spice, but it’s primarily driven by the synthesizer engine which combines physical and FM modeling. The teeth are actually triggers sensitive to touch and speed. And, while it looks a bit like a real kalimba, it’s much more sonically versatile and offers features you can only find on a synthesizer.
Beyond synthesizer sounds ranging from plucking to pads, there are also built-in effects covering basic spatial effects like delay and reverb, as well as distortion, bit crushing, and even tape emulation. There is also a multi-mode high-pass and low-pass filter, a simple arpeggiator.
More interesting, however, are the looper and touchpoints which add unique effects. The looper has time-stretching capabilities, can be reversed and re-recorded via effects for destructive processing. A series of touchpads on the front allow note slides and change timbre using effects Bastl calls Soil and Wind. These effects unlock the Kalimba’s accelerometer for further manipulation of the tone. There are also two programmable touch points on the top that can be assigned to almost any parameter, from simple pitch bends to reverb size.
Bastl is currently running a Kickstarter campaign for the first batch of Kalimbas. Normally, this is where you get the warnings about crowdfunded products. But Bastl Instruments is a well-established company with a long track record of providing weird musical gear on a large scale. The company called it “one of the most difficult products” it had ever created, and he spent more than three years developing it. It is therefore possible that Bastl will gauge interest before committing to mass production. We have reached out to Bastl for comment and will update if we receive a response.
