November 27, 2008

Volume 3, Number 10

Kalimba Magic NEWS

• In This Issue
• What's New at Kalimba Magic
• Kalimba Magic at PASIC
• New Products: Amadinda and Uhadi
• The Kalimba and the Hang Drum
• Kalimba Community

What's New at Kalimba Magic

A Big Thank You to Our Customers

A few months ago, both Kalimba Magic and our main maker of kalimbas, African Musical Instruments (AMI) were in difficult situations. My bank could not offer me the capital I needed to pay AMI for kalimbas, and that was causing problems for AMI. This is how companies have been going under these days. While the future is yet uncertain, both Kalimba Magic and AMI have survived this dark night. I need to give a big thank you to everyone who helped us out in our hour of need, and I am looking forward to many years of service to the kalimba community.

New Learn How Pages on Kalimba Magic Website

The new "Learn How to Play Kalimba" pages at www.KalimbaMagic.com.

Kalimba Magic has been putting out several Tips of the Day each week for the last two and a half years, and there has been a lot of useful material covered in the nearly-monthly newsletters as well. And now we offer something of an index to this wealth of kalimba instructional and informational material by way of the new "Learn How" pages.

We have pages with links to dozens of articles and series of tips for these different topics:

• Starting your Kalimba Journey, an overview of the Learn-How pages.
• Kalimba Fundamentals, including information on fixing a buzz and kalimba nomenclature.
• Intuitive Kalimba Learning
• Reading and Writing Tablature
• KTabS Tablature Software
• How to Tune the Kalimba
• How to Care for your Thumbnails
• Alto Kalimba Resources
• Treble Kalimba Resources
• African-tuned Karimba Resources
• 8-Note Kalimba Resources
• Pentatonic Kalimba Resources
• Sansula Resources
• More Kalimba Learning Resources
• Personal Kalimba Instruction

Buyers Guide Now With Video

We are happy to announce that the pages of the Kalimba Magic Buyers Guide now include video which will help prospective kalimba buyers to better compare the different kalimbas available.

Some Great Tips Series Unfolding Now

There are some really exciting series of Tips of the Day going on right now:

• Monday is the day for Mind/Body/Spirit tips, and in upcoming tips we share some new and subtle things you can do with your mind and body to improve the sound of your kalimba playing by eliminating thumbnail buzz against vibrating tines. Next in Monday tips, we will take an in-depth look at the traditional Shona karimba piece known as Bustu M'Tandari. Not only do we show you how to play this great tune on the karimba, but we also look into some of the spiritual aspects of playing this song.
• The Tuesday tips continue to instruct the details of rhythmic notation within the context of KTabS. If you don't know how to read music, this series of tips will give you exactly what you need to understand and read rhythms in KTabS as well as in standard music notation.
• The current Wednesday tips series provides incremental instruction in how to play my "hit single" First Look Inside.
• The Thursday tips are covering some cool things I've been learning on the G minor Karimba.
• And, hopefully, starting very soon, we'll be posting new video in Friday Tips, which have been on vacation for about a year.

Hey Mark! I just wanted to tell you how exited I am that you´ve started blogging about the G minor Karimba. I actually got the karimba from you and copied the tuning from your karimba book. Suddenly the G minor tuning started making a lot of sense as well as really beautiful music and I have been using it as my main instrument for a few month´s now. All I wanted to say was: keep up the good work and I'm really looking forward to what you have to teach us in your Featured Kalimba section.

- Sebastian

Kalimba Music for Your Video

The night I pulled in late to Dulles International Airport, having missed my connecting United flight by about 5 hours, I found myself staying the night in the Hyatt at United's expense. While I do not own a TV, as soon as I step into a hotel room, the TV always seems to go on. However, on this night I did not surf the channels, for CNN was running special programming, first on John McCain's life, and then on Barack Obama's. When Barack came on, a lot of the show had some great kalimba music in the background. Oh, how I was wishing that that music was mine!

Well, in another video, it is my music. Kalimba tunes from my CDs, Two Thumbs Up and Between the Dark and the Light, have found their way into various professional videos. This kalimba music is beautiful, peaceful, joyful, relaxing, of varied texture and instrumentation—and really does make perfect background music. If you are interested in using my music in video, please contact me.

Flip Flop on Hugh Tracey Price Increase

In the last newsletter, I warned of a future price increase on Hugh Tracey kalimbas, but today I must reverse myself. While AMI is raising their prices to their distributors in January 2009, a major shift in the exchange rate between the Dollar and the South African Rand has cancelled out the need for me to pass on a price increase to you. In fact, I have been able to offer a 10% price reduction on all Hugh Tracey kalimbas through Decmeber 31.