low resolution photography by davin risk

Photos taken with an Olympus D-460

I love the sound of the thumb piano. Played under different names and forms throughout Africa, this instrument is highly portable and can be played handheld with your thumbs and/or index fingers.

I don’t really know how to play my thumb piano but it’s still quite a bit of fun to play around with.

You’ve probably heard loads of thumb piano variations on recordings like the Six Feet Under theme by Thomas Newman. Here’s some incredible pan-african music that features amplified and modulated thumb piano — Konono No.1 (auto playing Ouicktime warning).

You can also learn the basics of thumb piano playing at PBSKids’ Africa for Kids.

thumb piano

heeheehee… the mandate for lowresolution has changed a little over time eh Davin? for some reason i found this entry to be hilariously funny. although of course, it is actually quite informative.

Ha — Yes! This whole “photoblog” thing is really just a fluke. lowresolution.com used to be an experimental Flash site before all of this photo nonsense took over.

And when I changed to the new format the only camera I was using was the 1.something megapixel Olympus. Somedays I think I should really get back to a looser format.