Triangles, Kalimbas, & Rainsticks

Three families of instrument that share nothing except being easy to pick up: triangles, kalimbas and rainsticks.

Triangles are bent steel rods struck with a metal beater. Because the shape is open, a triangle has no fundamental pitch, so it fits over any chord and cannot be played wrong. Sizes run from four inch to eight inch from SUZUKI, EMUS and NINO, with replacement strikers and holders stocked.

Kalimbas, also called thumb pianos or mbiras, have tuned metal tines over a wooden soundboard, plucked with the thumbs. Every tine is in the same scale, so a first-time player produces something that sounds like music rather than an exercise. GMP models run from a coconut mbira through seventeen and twenty-one key boards in koa, mahogany, walnut, acacia and poplar, alongside lyre harps and the seventeen and thirty-one string KaLyre.

Rainsticks are sealed tubes with pins inside and small beads or seeds that fall through them. Tipped slowly they give a long, falling wash that genuinely resembles rain, and the sound lasts as long as the tube is long. Bamboo models come in eight, sixteen, twenty-four and forty inch from EMUS and MEINL, plus GMP PVC models and a three and a half inch mini.