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Making an electric thumb piano

A few years ago I bought the Gilles Peterson in Africa album which features many a fine tune but none finer, in my opinion, than the fuzzy, buzzy, plinky-plonky, frenetic madness of Lufuala NDonga by Konono No.1. Every so often I hear a piece of music and know that I’ve hit on something that will stay with me, and probably turn into a minor obsession. Such was the case with Konono No.1 and their contemporaries. I’ve since aquired the Congotronics 2 compilation which features similar stuff and, as suspected, I am now firmly obsessed with electric thumb pianos.

The sound of Congotronics is a sort of hypnotic DIY punk trance. The musicians, all of whom hail from the Congo, make their own instruments out of found and salvaged parts, resulting in a very lo-fi sound. The most distintive is that of the thumb pianos which are fitted with pick ups and then fed through various effects pedals, mainly distortion. It’s essentially street music but has aquired a bit of a following in recent years. There are clear comparisons between this sound and that of Western club music – the polyrhythmic structure, the repetitive hooks, the intensity and build up of the tunes.

My friend and musical collaborator Matt shares my obsession and, being something of a technical whizz, decided he would try his hand at building his own electric thumb piano. Various parts have been salvaged so far, such as a steel strut from an old wardrobe (apparently it will make an idea bridge.) He’s bought a pair of Belcat GT538 acoustic guitar pick ups and while he hunts down the wood for the body and the keys themselves (old bike spokes are the thing, we hear), the other day we attached the pick-ups to my ready-made, tried and tested, off the shelf (via Afrcia) thumb pianos to see what noises we could make.

Having strapped them to the body of the thumb piano with an elastic band and ran them into Matts mixer via a guitar distortion pedal, we weren’t getting much more than static and feedback. It turned out that the signal was way too weak – a preamp was needed. First we tried the little preamp that came with my Soundman OKM binaural microphones (being careful to feed it’s stereo input with a mono signal using techno-skills I didn’t quite understand), but this had no effect. In the end Matt, utilising more confusing technical wizardry, used his mixer as a giant and over qualified preamp to boost the signal. Lo and behold, distorted electric thumb piano noises! Yes!

pick ups attached to the bridge of the thumb piano

Que an hour or two of us excitedly wiring our contraption through various different effects, having a good old play and getting over excited. Flanger and digital delay work very well, as does a Tonebender distortion pedal, although the latter would really benefit from a proper preamp and mixing some of the clean signal in with the distorted one. While the setup was far from ideal it has a lot of potential. I think Matts homemade masterpiece is going to be amazing.