The Array Mbira

The array mbira is a modern instrument of the African thumb piano family, usually played with the thumbs and sometimes fingers commonly using metal tines.
The array mbira is a radical redesign of the African mbira. The notes of the array mbira are arranged according to the array system, invented in the United States by inventor/perform-er/author Bill Wesley. The array system is a way to rearrange the pattern by which the notes are positioned on a wide variety of musical instruments, and is both isomorphic and unimorphic (meaning that all the notes of any given key signature will be unified into a single area that excludes notes outside that key signature). There is only one unimorphic planar system, and that is the system employed on the array mbira.
The array mbira is played by a number of popular musicians, including Ry Cooder (Buena Vista Social Club and Talking Timbuktu), Emil Richards, Pharoah Sanders, Mileece, Shannon Terry, and Imogen Heap.

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