Hot stuff added: Arpeggio and Tie. Sheet music creation for the kalimba won't be whole until Arpeggio is available. Though not really working well for kalimba playstyle, Tie is an essential part for sheet music creation, it's the preparation for our next update's feature: Exporting to MusicXML, PDF, and MIDI.

What's an Arpeggio?

Arpeggio is a type of broken chord, each note is played after another with a tiny amount of delay. This term can be seen in music sheets for harps. However, a Kalimba player can achieve this effect by swiping their thumbs on two or more tines, or plucking with rapid succession.

Arpeggio for kalimba is often ascending - lower notes are played first. With that in mind, Sheet Composer works just the same. All you have to do is specify which notes to add the arpeggio effect, the app will then play them correctly for you.

[Updated May 28] For consistency, when a note within a chord (same duration, part, and on the same line) has its arpeggio set/unset, other notes in that chord will do the same.

[Updated May 28] To change arpeggio direction, go to Toolbar > NOTE > Arpeggio > choose either Ascending or Descending.

Jump here to see how an Arpeggio is created: https://kalimbist.com/how-to/composer/#makeArpeggio

What about a Tie?

Tie is a musical symbol that...ties two notes of the same pitch together. Tied notes make their pitch last longs as the duration of these two notes combined.

This is especially useful when you want a note to exceed the maximum duration of a measure, or you just want to use ties instead of dots.

Tying notes is also an essential part of music sheet. With that being said, it's gonna take a big part in our next feature update: Export to MusicXML, PDF, and MIDI.

Check out how to create a Tie: https://kalimbist.com/how-to/composer/#editorNotesWorking

Other changes

• As Tie creation is implemented, Hint Note will now be fixed within a measure. Previous sheets with notes exceeding a measure limit are still supported in Sheet Player, but will most likely be unable to export correctly with Export sheet feature (currently in development).
• Editor Bubble is improved. It shouldn’t be getting too much in the way when creating notes now. If it annoys you so, just press ESC (on desktop) and it’s gone for good, until you select something else.
• Add Report a Problem in Menu -> INFO to quickly navigate to the place where you can contact us to report something that goes wrong (and more topics!)
• Add Key Map in Menu -> INFO to show all possible key mappings for Sheet Composer – create like a pro!
• [Updated May 25] Selected notes now have a white border instead of changing color. Now that's a correct way to indicate selection!
• [Updated May 25] Add ability to switch notes' part using the Switch Part function in note creation.
• [Updated May 28] Add Waiting Gap to both Player and Composer. Waiting Gap is a "dark measure" at the beginning of a sheet. It's there to give you some time to grab your kalimba for practice. By default this gap is 2 quarter notes long. You can change it to any amount between 0-10 quarter notes. 0 means there will be no waiting gap at all.

Bug fixes

Bug extermination report - here is a list of (hopefully) dead bugs:

• Transposition sometimes worked twice as necessary, making the result different as expected.
• Tine List in Tine Layout doesn’t sync with those in the Player (due to the above bug).
• Fixed a bug where notes made by Undo / Redo feature are not being saved.
• Fixed a bug where Sheets with number of tines different than 17 display tines way past the limit area (Thanks to l3lueskyiiz for making a sheet with 21 tines to debug this!)
• Restore Defaults not working correctly. It now has 3 separated flows, each for Sheet Player, Sheet Edit and Sheet Create.
• Fixed a bug where Letter notation on the tines display wrong accidental notes and octave number.
• [Updated May 25] Fixed a bug where Editor Bubble caused memory leak to the application.
• [Updated May 25] Fixed: Pasting notes that exceed the last measure would cause measure creation with time signature of 4/4 instead of the notes' time signature.
• [Updated May 25] Fixed a bug where changing notes duration would allow them to go over the measure's limit.
• [Updated May 28] Fixed so that resuming the sheet would not play notes that have already passed.

Sneak peek of what’s coming up next

Export Sheet – is now in development!

Exporting Sheet will support MusicXML, PDF, and MIDI.

• MusicXML: a powerful type of digital music sheet that can easily be read on music sheet editors like MuseScore – which can be used to convert to PDF for easy printing, or to generate audio.
• PDF: Export it, print it, practice it! But hey, at least try our Sheet Player with all the features like slowing down, transposition, select measures to play, and more! We promise you won’t be disappointed ヾ(￣▽￣)
• MIDI: Can be loaded into any MIDI devices... We’ll just support this for now. Maybe there will be a MIDI kalimba in the future. This would be a perfect fit for it haha.

Offline Client (for desktop)

There would be much of a hindrance to create kalimba sheet music requiring internet connection... fret not! We’re working on an offline client where you can use all features on the website right now – offline!

We don’t know if it’s possible to create a mobile version, yet. The web version already has the ability to create sheet on any mobile devices using a modern browser like Firefox and Chrome. It should work for most Android devices, iOS is not tested and is reported to have sound problem.

That’s it for such a long post, thank you so much for your support!

Enjoy creating!

The Kalimbist Team