Kalimba Magic NEWS
Volume 1, Number 6
September 20, 2006
In This Issue:
KTabS Reader and KPacks
Now Available
Dear reader, if you haven't gone to check out the Kalimba Tablature Software, now is the time to do so. Randy and Sharon Eaton, the authors of KTabS, have just come out with two great and economical products: the KTabS Reader, and KPacks to go along with the Kalimba Magic instructional books.
The KTabS Reader is an easy way to view music created just for the kalimba. When you open a file with the Reader, you are looking at sheet music for a kalimba song. You can play the song on your kalimba while reading the music on your computer screen. Or, press the play button and let KTabS play the music for you.
With the KTabs Reader you can stop and start the music playback at any point, and play the music over and over again as you are learning it.
The Reader will play more than one file simultaneously, which means you can hear a kalimba duet played right on your computer!
My friend Geo had a hard time following the tablature in my kalimba books - until he got KTabS. "Wow! KTabS is the PowerTabs of the Kalimba! I totally get it!" The KTabS Reader is now available at the KTabS Store for $5.
You might ask yourself "So, just what would I read with the KTabS reader?" The answer would be: KPacks of all of the great music in the Kalimba Magic books. Sharon has taken the time to transcribe all of the exercises and songs in the Alto Fundamentals Book, the Treble Fundamentals Book, and the Christmas Carols Book (in both Alto and Treble versions for all 25 songs), and they are available from the KTabS Store for $5 each.
New Recording by SchaZangAway:
Harmonic Journey
SchaZangAway is a new and exciting group featuring Scott Schaeffer on Native American Flute, Eric Zang on ethnic percussion, and Mark Holdaway on kalimba, karimba, guitar, mandola, and mandolin. This group was born out of a busted gig up at Mesa Bookman's back in May - we all jammed for free, and the music was so magically good that we immediately went into the studio to write a CD's worth of songs. The following week, we performed that music to an enthusiastic audience at the Spiritual Enrichment Center in the West Valley. Next month, we'll be playing at the Zion Native American Flute Festival. And now, you can take this CD home with you and hear the magic first hand.
We have made a few sound clips from the CD available for your listening pleasure:
In all, the CD is 12 songs and 53 minutes. I hope you enjoy this music that we are putting out to the world. You can hear SchaZanagAway at the Zion Canyon Native American Flute Festival on October 14 and 15.Purchase SchaZangAway's CD Harmonic Journey
Interview with Andy Robinson
Kalimba Innovator in San Diego
This month's kalimba interview is with multi-instrumentalist and kalimba innovator Andy Robinson. You will be particularly interested in reading this interview if you have an electric kalimba as we pick Andy's brain for signal processing tidbits.
KM: When did you start playing kalimba?
What inspired you to start playing?
AR: In the 'Seventies, I was playing drums in a progressive rock
band called Horsefeathers, based here in San Diego. I wrote lyrics for
that band, but I wanted to begin writing music, too, and I was
intimidated by the guitar. Also, there were guitarists everywhere
you looked, and I think I was subconsciously holding out for something
different. A friend introduced me to the Appalachian dulcimer
(or mountain dulcimer), and I was hooked by it's unique, droning
tone, and the relative ease with which you could play it. I began
writing songs on it right away, figuring out how to amplify it so I
could play it with the band, etc. Another friend said, "If you like
primitive instruments, you should check out the kalimba - it will
be perfect for you, since you're a percussionist." He mentioned
that Taj Mahal played one, and I eventually saw Taj play one, on
one of those "In Concert" shows, I think. I loved the sound, and
was determined to get one, but what really got to me was seeing
Maurice White of Earth Wind and Fire playing one, also on TV.
He had it amplified somehow, and was running all over the stage
in front of the band, playing these licks that sounded like a
miniature piano! I was blown away.
KM: You played kalimba in an electric band.
What sorts of problems did you have meshing the delicate kalimba
sound to the loud sounds of the band? How did you overcome those
problems?
AR: The dulcimer and the kalimba became my main song writing
instruments for many years. I really began playing amplified kalimba
a lot in a band called Different World - in our original configuration
we had Chapman Stick, acoustic guitar, drums, male and female vocals,
and either dulcimer or kalimba, depending on the song. I played most
of the lead solos on those two instruments, and I experimented a lot,
with all kinds of pedals and gear to boost and effect the sound of
both instruments. To this day I still have a Barcus Berry mandolin
pickup on my main Hugh Tracey treble kalimba, though I rarely use
it any more.
To make the kalimba work in a rock setting was fairly easy, at least, compared to amplifying the dulcimer. The piezo pickup I had in the dulcimer would pick up the sound of the drummer playing behind me, or the vocals through the PA, and would feed back. I have no objection to feeback if Jeff Beck is using it, but on acoustic instruments it's another matter. For the kalimba, I used a little Boss Graphic Equalizer stomp box to control frequencies that would feed back. I marked all my settings, and might adjust them slightly from gig to gig, but not much. I ran my instruments through a Roland Jazz Chorus amp that sounded great, but I think it was as heavy as my car!
I tried every effect you could think of, but realized that the subtle things worked best on a kalimba, at least in a live situation - chorus, echo, reverb. Now I don't play live, but I do record a lot; with software, you can go crazy with effects, and it's a lot more easily controlled - the right fuzz kalimba sound can be absolutely awesome. I'm working on something like that right now.
By the way, I never could run all over the place like Maurice White did while playing the kalimba. I don't know how he did it. People used to tell me I looked like I was reading a book while I played it!
Eventually I decided that, in a live setting, my acoustic instruments sounded just fine without all that processing, and I began shedding all that equipment as I formed other, more truly acoustic bands, and just used a microphone instead of the pickup.
But like I said, in the studio I still like to experiment - on my CD, "Exotic America," I've got one song called "Penguin" which has kalimba, and a track of backwards kalimba. Now, that is an amazing sound! (Listen to the intro to "Penguin", the first cut in this sonic collage of Andy Robinson's "Exotic America" CD)
KM: About running around vs. reading a book: I usually have a kalimba
in my hands while I walk, and when people who knew me drove by, they would
speculate on whether I was playing a gameboy or working with a palm pilot.
AR: I guess it's hard to be a wild showman when you play the kalimba!
Maybe we should set one on fire once in a while! It worked for Jimi Hendrix...
KM: The hugh tracey alto kalimba has a very strong resonance right
around A 440 (ie, the A in the middle of the right side of the kalimba)
due to the size and shape of the box, and this is just part of the sound
of the instrument, but that can cause feedback when you plug your kalimba in.
Did you explicitly deal with that resonance with your graphic EQ?
AR: Actually, I never amplified the alto, only the treble kalimba.
I used to have a piece of masking tape stuck on the side of my Boss
stomp box EQ, with all the settings for the various sliders marked
in pen, so I wouldn't have to remember them. It worked - I don't
remember them! Sorry!
I probably pulled down whatever frequencies seemed to control the attack of the note - the "click" part of the kalimba sound can sometimes be pronounced and bothersome when it goes through the electronics of a pickup and amp.
In addition to EQ, I used a slight chorus effect, to "round off" the sound.
KM: Did you ever do much with digital delay set to some number of beats,
so the echo'd sound lines up with the live notes you are playing now
so you can harmonize with yourself, or play counterpoint with yourself?
AR: I've done some stuff like that, experimenting and improvising
against my own backing track, so to speak. It can form the basis for
some neat compositions. The very first time I did that, it was on a
Superscope cassette recorder that had an extra "play" head. You could
get an echo out of it, and I used it a lot. Eventually I graduated
to analog, and then digital, delay units.
If someone wanted to get into that now, there are all kinds of amazing options for "looping." The loopers I've seen are very sophisticated, and relatively easy to use. You play a pattern, stomp a pedal and store that pattern. Then you can play another pattern and store it, then you can switch between the stored patterns by stomping another button, and solo over your patterns, or create new patterns on the fly. With a little practice you can create whole improvised "arrangements" in real time.
KM: Tell me about the band The Earthlings.
AR:I had a treble kalimba, and I talked my friend,
Richard Matthew, into getting an alto. Richard had never played a
musical instrument before, but he had sophisticated musical tastes,
and he always had good musical ideas, even if he wasn't always
that confident at expressing them. We used to take our kalimbas on
hikes, and play whenever we stopped at a particularly scenic or
inspiring spot, like atop the cliffs at Torrey Pines, where you
could see down to the beach . I think it was a very pure form
of musical expression - no need for a particular rhythm or
repeatable melody, just a wordless way of responding to the
beauty of our environment. I used to think of it as making
up "spontaneous soundtracks." You could consider every sound
that happened - the wind, birds, people's voices on the trail,
cars on a distant road, whatever - as a part of an unending
"composition" that matched the "movie" of life, and then
play kalimba along with it.
Every once in a while, we'd look up from what we'd been playing and go, "Wow! What did we just do? Play that last part again!" We wrote some good stuff that way.
The prog rock band I mentioned earlier was breaking up, so I asked my other pal, Bill Birney, if he wanted to try some music with me and Richard. Bill was the keyboard player and main composer in Horsefeathers - a very advanced musician - and he had a 4-track tape recorder. Even before the Earthlings, I was always bugging him to record some of my weird musical ideas!
When the three of us got together, it was an interesting mix. We all contributed musical ideas, and we recorded 4 songs. We did one gig, but then Bill decided he'd had enough of life in LA, and he left for Seattle. Not long after, Richard moved to Arizona.
We were probably only together for a couple of months, but I consider the Earthlings a very significant band as far as my musical development. I really got to let my imagination run rampant. The music we made holds up pretty well. Richard recently put an Earthling's page up on MySpace, and we've been getting these amazing, heartfelt responses to our sound clips.
KM: The kalimba has its roots in a thousand year old African musical
instrument. What do you think about the kalimba's future?
What are YOUR plans for the kalimba?
AR: I must admit, I was surprised to discover that there are so
many people interested in the kalimba these days. The MySpace page,
and Kalimba Magic, are both real eye-openers - so many people have
kalimbas, or express a wish to play kalimba, and there are actually
a lot of artists who play them.
I've been "rediscovering" the kalimba lately - there's nothing else quite like it - I love the vibrato effect you can get (although some people tend to think it's a synthesizer when they hear it on a CD)! And I like some of the other "acoustic effects" you can get - for instance, I'll place the kalimba on the head of a snare drum (with the snares turned off), and play with my fingertips, or with these tiny leather-wrapped beaters that came with a miniature drum I bought in a gift shop. The head and shell of the drum amplify the kalimba, and the beaters allow you to play it almost like a little xylophone - it's a much different sound than you would get by plucking with your thumbs.
On the intro and ending of one of the songs on "Exotic America," a song called "Nameless Parade," I stroke the tines with a guitar pick, and use an echo effect to make the sound sustain and float around a little - it's sort of like a tuned Guiro or mini-xylophone. There's a lot of cool stuff you can do.
KM: Yes, I am often impressed that people with only a few weeks of kalimba experience come up with things that I hadn't thought of. It is still a wide open field.
AR: Even if you don't do anything fancy or wacky with it, it's just a lovely, pleasant sound. It sounds good even if you accidentally drop it! Well, maybe not...
Some people might think of the kalimba as a limited instrument, and I understand that - it's not going to take the place of the grand piano or electric guitar, but those instruments have their limitations, too.
KM: I liken it to the Buddhist who finds total freedom through restricting freedom through meditation. In limiting the possibilities to 17, 15, 11, or even 8 notes, we don't have to worry about certain things, and we open many doors to creativity.
AR: Besides, any instrument is really only as limited as the imagination of the person playing it. Look at what Jimi Hendrix did for the guitar - in a world overrun with wailing electric guitarists, it's easy to forget that no one ever played like that before Hendrix came along.
I would say that the kalimba has loads of undiscovered potential, and I'm looking forward to discovering some of it myself.
KM: In a world where it is easy for some people to feel that there is nothing new under the sun, it is really a blessing to be connected with an instrument which has the ability to open us up to new things and wonder again and again. Thank you very much, Andy, its been a joy hearing about your kalimba experiences.
You can find out more about Andy and his music at
- Buy Andy's CD Exotic America
- www.andyrobinsonmusic.com
- myspace.com/andyrobinsonmusic
- cdbaby.com/andyrobinson
Contest: Cool sounds you can make on your electric kalimba
This month's contest is for cool electronic or digital effects applied to your electric kalimba. Please submit an MP3 recording of the cool effect plus a description of the effects processor(s) and settings you used. If we like your cool effect, we'll feature it in next month's Kalimba Magic Newsletter, and give you a modest gift certificate for Kalimba Magic. Send your MP3 and your description to us at contest@kalimbamagic.com. Good luck!
And, for those of us who didn't get it together for last month's contest on Kalimba Loops, here is a simple riff for the G-minor-tuned pentatonic kalimba, borrowed from my New Pentatonic Kalimba Book:
You can download the KTabS file for this loop here.
To play this on your computer, get the trial version of the KTabS Reader
A new book from Kalimba Magic:
I remember when our elementary school music teacher pulled six notes out of her "individual note xylophone" case, put them on the table, and asked for volunteers. My hand was up first, and I got first turn at making experimental music with the pentatonic scale. I could not believe how easy it was to make things that sounded so great
A few years later came the guitar with the pentatonic blues scale, and then my discovery while jamming out on my lime-green bean bag chair that the pentatonic major and minor scales were the same thing, just starting in differnet places.
The pentatonic kalimba also is a wonderful doorway to opening your creativity, for novices, experts or anyone in between. And now, I am coming out with a great new book on playing the 11-note, two octave pentatonic kalimba. The book gives equal time to the G-major pentatonic tuning and the G-minor pentatonic tuning and shows you insightful playing techniques that will help you find your way with your own music. 48 pages, with 75 exercises and songs which I've recorded on the included CD. And this is the first kalimba book to come with the KTabS reader and all 75 songs in KTabS format.
The Pentatonic Book will be available in a few weeks, but you can pre-order now. In anticipation of the new Pentatonic Book, the the Thursday Tip of the Day features the pentatonic kalimba, and those tips will give you an idea of what you can expect from the book. This is my sixth kalimba book so far, and I feel that it is far and away my best one. A HUGE thanks to Sharon and Randy at KTabS for helping make this the best kalimba book yet. The flip side of that statement is that even better things are coming down the pipeline soon!
The Pentatonic Book will be available around October 1, but you can pre-order it now from the Kalimba Shop. Because this book also includes KTabS and all the exercises in KTabS format, the price is $25 - thats $5 more than our other books. But if you pre-order before October 1, you can get your copy for $20.
Kalimba Magic Books for the Hugh Tracey Kalimbas
Just a reminder of the instructional books now available from Kalimba Magic:
The Best Ever Book of 8-Note Kalimba Music*Kalimba Fundamentals for the Hugh Tracey Alto Kalimba*
Kalimba Fundamentals for the Hugh Tracey Treble Kalimba*
Kalimba Christmas Carols for the Alto and Treble Kalimbas*
Playing the Hugh Tracey Karimba
*KTabs KPacks are available for these books.
The Kalimba Community
What's new? The Kalimba Magic Classifieds!
These are FREE ads you can place in this newsletter to benefit the kalimba community at large. And here is our FIRST Kalimba Classified Ad:
THE KALIMBA MAGIC CLASSIFIEDS
Hello:
Kalimba player in London, Ontario seeking other
kalimba players for learning and music. Can travel to Toronto or
Michigan. Email me! MyKTabS screen name is lizabeth.
Also new in the kalimba community: links to Roland P. Young, Devin St. Claire, and Tom Spicer in the Kalimba Community Pages, and now great CD's by Decio Gioielli and Andy Robinson are available at The Kalimba Shop.
The Holdouts
Jim Gates and I are The Holdouts. We are both multi-instrumentalists, and both play kalimbas and karimbas. Typically about a third of our music at our performances will have kalimba in it. We've started a new web site to promote The Holdouts.
If you have any questions, or if you have suggestions for future Newsletter Topics or Tip Of The Day ideas, please share them with me! -Mark
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