#magic beanz

The Berimbau is also used on live performances of The Clock.

There’s a bit more to the instrument than just a bow hit with a stick. This video does a good job of demonstrating it. The rattle is not always used, and I don’t believe that Mauro uses one with Atoms for Peace (as such, I will not refer to it in the following). With the aid of the rock, the pitch varies predominantly between two pitches, with the second being hit in two different ways. The first is a strong and clear, and the second is weak and buzzy. This may not always be the case, but we will assume that it is for the purpose of emulation. Finally, the gourd allows one to introduce quite a lot of resonance to the sound.

An acoustic guitar will be preferable to a classical, as the string of the Berimbau is metal. For pitch, playing around the tenth and eleventh fret on the d-string of a guitar and detuning about half to a quarter of a semitone should be accurate to the Berimbau in the video. You can also deliberately press down on the string in a bad place, such as on top of or just after the fret, so as to reproduce those weaker hits on the higher note. But just switching between those notes is a bit unsatisfying and still sounds like a guitar. Playing with a coin will make it sound less like a guitar, but still not quite right. Hitting the string with a stick rather than a pick did improve its similarity, but not by much, and trying to fret with a rock really didn’t do much of anything helpful.

The resonant chamber seems to be a significant part of the berinbau’s sound, even when it’s not used to add a huge amount of resonance. One way to try to add this to your sound would be by playing a clean electric guitar and using a wah pedal, which you could open up to create a similar sound. However, using an electric guitar would probably make you sound even less like a Berimbau than before.