How to write songs

Notes

Numbers 1–7 are the notes of the scale, counted from your kalimba’s home note: on a C kalimba, 1 is C, 2 is D, and so on. Letters a–g work too. Separate notes with spaces.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

c d e f g a b

Same notes, as letters

Octaves

Put * after a note for the next octave up (the tines with a dot), and ** for two octaves up. An apostrophe ' works like *, which helps when pasting tabs. Use _ for an octave down, on kalimbas with tines below the middle octave.

1 1* 1**

Up one and two octaves

5_ 6_ 7_ 1

Down an octave

Sharps and flats

Put # right after a note for sharp, or b for flat. Mostly for 34-key chromatic kalimbas. Sharps and flats show in a darker shade of the note below.

4# 5 6b

f# g bb

As letters, bb is B flat

Note lengths

A note lasts one beat unless you mark it. Each - adds a beat, each / halves it, and . makes it dotted (one and a half times as long). Longer notes show as wider blocks.

1 1- 1--- 1/ 1// 1.

1, 2, 4, ½, ¼ and 1½ beats

3. 2/ 1-

A dotted rhythm

Rests

Use 0 or r for silence. Rests take length marks too.

1 2 0 3 r- 1

One-beat rest, then a two-beat rest

Chords

Notes inside parentheses play together. Length marks go after the closing parenthesis. In the app’s editor you can also press several tines at once: they play together and write the chord for you.

(1 3 5)- (4 6 1*)-

Lyrics

Put a line starting with > under a line of notes. Each word goes with the next note; split words into syllables with hyphens. Use _ to hold a syllable across an extra note. Rests are skipped.

1 1 5 5 6 6 5-
> Twin-kle twin-kle lit-tle star

Shows as: “Twinkle twinkle little star”, one syllable per note

1 2- 3
> Oh _ my

“Oh” is held over the first two notes

A new line of notes starts a new line of lyrics in the player.

Extras

Lines starting with // are notes to yourself and are ignored. Bar lines | and commas are ignored too, so you can paste tabs that use them.

// chorus
1 2 3 | 4 5 6

Try it

Type or paste a song here to see how Tines Studio will read it.

Cheat sheet