Ask Mark
Answers to Your Kalimba Questions

I get one or two dozen emails each day asking me all sorts of questions, and I answer almost every one. Some of those questions keep coming around. But NEXT time someone asks about what to do if they drop their kalimba and it goes out of tune, I'll send them a link to this page.
—Mark Holdaway

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Estelle writes: I dropped my karimba and it went out of tune.

How do I get my karimba back in tune?

Dear Mark, This is an S.O.S. My karimba has fallen on the floor. It is out of tune. I try to tune it, but I can't. I don't know how to proceed to find again the right sound. Is there some kind of way, or method, or pattern, or any kind of guide or help to tune it?
—Estelle

Dear Estelle,

Probably when the karimba fell, the tines "jumped up" and let the bridge slide out a fraction of a centimeter, making the distance from bridge to tine tip smaller, making the notes go higher. Likely one side is worse than the other side. This can happen to karimba or kalimba.

Do you have experience in tuning your kalimbas?

You will probably need to push the bridge back up a bit (it is not glued down, just held in place by friction enhanced by the force of the tines pressing down on the bridge). You can take a butter knife or a screw driver—any long skinny strong piece of metal. Place it under the tines, parallel to the bridge, and push the bridge back up to where you think it used to be. You can figure out where it used to be by checking the tuning of one note on each side.

After you realign the bridge, all tines should be approximately in tune (unless you had changed them a lot after you dropped it), but you will still have to go back and fine tune each tine using a chromatic tuner. Check out the Learn How to Tune page on the Kalimba Magic website. You will find videos there showing how to tune your kalimba.

The karimba's native tuning is shown here, though there are also links to other tunings. Other kalimbas' standard tunings are accessible from the Learn How to Play pages.

If you do not own an inexpensive electronic chromatic tuner, you should! When the African tuning says "C# -40" that means that the note should be tuned 40 cents below the C# note, i.e., the "needle" on the LCD will point to -40 when your note is tuned as it should be.

If all else fails, find a guitar player with a tuner and explain the situation. Together, you will teach each other what each needs to know to get your correct tuning back. And if that is not possible, you can send the karimba to me and I'll return the karimba back to you in the tuning you desire.

—Mark

Margy loves her kalimba, but asks:

Will KTabS work on a Mac?

LOVE my Alto Kalimba I bought last month! So far I've memorized 6 hymns. I lead worship at my church and hope to be able to incorporate this beautiful instrument into the mix some day. Question: will KTabS work on a Mac? Thanks for sharing your passion! —Margy

Dear Margy,

KTabS, the Kalimba Tablature Software, is a wonderful tool for learning how to play kalimba, for learning how to play hundreds of different songs, and for writing down your own musical ideas so you can remember and learn them yourself. The one drawback of KTabS is that it only runs on Windows computers. There are, currently, no plans for porting KTabS to the Mac.

However, there are wrapper programs such as Wine, or Darwine, which create a virtual machine, i.e., a software environment running on your Mac computer that lets programs "think" they are running on a Windows computer. My son, Tim Holdaway, spent about two hours one day installing Darwine on his Mac and then installing and setting up KTabS to run inside of Darwine—and he was successful. Every aspect of KTabS which we tested, including mouse clicks, cut and paste, sound, graphics, and printing, worked fine. But Tim is pretty busy being a student and hasn't been able to find time to document what he did. He would need to go through the process again on a Mac that doesn't already have Darwine installed (I'm working on this). And Tim warns that this is not for the computer novice, you need to be comfortable using the command line.

Meanwhile, I recognize the situation Mac users are in. So I have been making an extra effort to make sure Mac users can get the benefit of Kalimba Magic's educational resources without having access to KTabS. In the Tips of the Day I often post a jpeg image or downloadable PDF of the KTabS tablature, which can be viewed or used by almost any computer on the planet. I also try to include MP3 audio files and even sometimes videos.

But some, such as the Easter Hymns or the Student Karimba pieces, do not yet include MP3 audio files, so these can only be heard in KTabS. If you are a Mac user and you want to purchase a collection that does not ivclude MP3s, give a holler and I'll get the MP3s recorded for you and update the download to include the MP3s.

—Mark

Ian wants to know:

Can you tune my kalimba to a blues scale?

I was wondering if you are able to produce an alto kalimba tuned to the blues scale. For example, if the lowest note was G it might have 13 tines as follows: G Bb C C# D F G Bb C C# D F G. (Low G centrally with other notes arranged six on either side.) Is that feasible? Basically I am after something that can be used to improvise on blues numbers in place of the saxophone I usually play. —Thanks, Ian

Dear Ian,

Yes, can do!

The scale you request is a 6 notes per octave scale, which is in between the pentatonic (5 notes per octave) and diatonic (7 notes per octave). If we start with the 15 note, two octave Alto diatonic kalimba, you will have 2 extra notes to deal with. First, you could use the extra notes to extend the range of the scale. I recommend putting them on top rather than on bottom - making them lower than the low G will result in notes that don't resonate well given the size of the box. Extending the range on the top end is illustrated in the first tuning chart at the right. The top C may be a bit thin tonally, and would be more likely to buzz a bit. The advantage: every G is on the same side. This is true of all notes - the 6 note scale results in the notes staying on the same side. SO, you learn a melody in the lower octave, and it is the same in the upper octave. ALSO, G C D = 1 - 4 - 5 are on the same side - you will live on the right side, and the left side will be spice notes and helping notes.

The other option I would recommend is to add one more note to the scale so it is a 7 note scale. I have picked A, the 2nd, and this is illustrated in the second tuning chart. IF you have ever played ALTO before, then you know that the G's are in the same place as in a regular ALTO tuning. Also, a melody will switch sides as it passes from the lower octave to the upper. While this sounds like a bad thing, this fact makes accompaniment much easier. For myself, I am going to try this second option (but I am very familiar with the ALTO already - so this is more like a minor dialect modification).

Kalimba Man Kevin Spears does something like this on his kalimbas - the 4 4# 5 thing.

And as long as I don't have to take the tines out and rearrange them, there is no charge for retuning a Hugh Tracey Alto Kalimba.

—Mark

I hope these answers are helpful to the greater kalimba community. I certainly don't know everything about the kalimba, but I know a lot and I'm learning more each day—and I am happy to share this information. So send me your questions. In doing so, you will be helping to expand kalimba understanding in the Universe.