New Products from Kalimba Magic

African American Spirituals on the Alto Kalimba

We have just released a collection of 21 African-American Spirituals arranged for Alto Kalimba, available as a KTabS/PDF download for $10. Most of the songs in this release include only the music without lyrics.

Each spiritual comes in both a basic (B) and an advanced (A) arrangement. Basic arrangements are melody only or melody with minimal harmony and aim to help beginning players move into advanced music more quickly. Advanced arrangements have melody with harmony or melody with counterpoint. Basic and advanced arrangements make this a great learning tool, accessible to students with a wide range of capability.

You can read the release notes for African-American Spirituals for Alto.

The Happy Family

The Happy Family is three great Hugh Tracey Kalimbas: an Alto with pickup, a Treble with pickup and the HT HotShot-11. All are tuned to the key of G major and ready to jam together and make wonderful music. This grouping of kalimbas is available at a significant discount: SAVE 25% when you purchase these three kalimbas together!

At this time, there is a fair amount of music available for the Alto and Treble kalimbas, and a new download for the HotShot-11 is available. But the big opportunity here relates to the notes that each kalimba has and the way the tines are painted. The HotShot-11 has only 11 notes, but they are the same notes as the top 11 notes on the Alto kalimba. In other words, the Alto is just like the 11-Note, but with four extra notes in the middle, at lower pitches than the HotShot-11. Every note the HotShot-11 has will also be found on the Treble.

Furthermore, the painted tines on each of these instruments "line up" - corresponding painted tines on different instruments will have the same notes, so you can use the painted tines to help translate a melodic figure from one kalimba to another.

Here is one scenario: Papa bear plays the Alto, mama bear plays the Treble and baby bear plays the HotShot-11. The HotShot-11 has broad tines with more space between tines than the Alto or Treble, making it easier to play. And the fact that each note on the HotShot-11 is also on both the Alto and the Treble means that music can be child led - i.e., baby bear plays on the HotShot-11, and papa bear can see what baby bear does, and either duplicate it or support it (perhaps with lower notes). Meanwhile, mama bear can glance at baby bear on the HotShot-11 and mirror it on the Treble, or can even climb up a 5th, 6th, or an octave higher to make a harmony, descant, or an interlocking part.

But if your family doesn't look just like Goldilocks' bears' family —no problem. A father and two kids? Alto for dad and the treble and HotShot for the kids. Two mama bears? Two papa bears? A couple and an aging parent? Love makes a family. In time, I believe we will all recognize the supremacy of love.

Here is a zip file of KTabS/PDF tablature for two tunes you can play with the Happy Family.

The KeyMaster - Four Hugh Tracey Kalimbas in Different Keys

If you've ever tried to jam on kalimba with other musicians playing piano, guitar, flute, or other instruments, you probably know that key is an issue. If you have ever tried to sing along with your kalimba, you know that key is an issue. You may be able to sing some songs with the kalimba, but other songs will have melodies that, when performed in your kalimba's key, will go too high or too low for your voice to follow.

The answer? Kalimba Magic is now offering The Keymaster collection, four kalimbas, which can be Altos or Trebles with pickups, in whatever four keys you desire—at a highly discounted price.

In the western scheme of music, there are basically twelve different keys: A, Bb, B, C, C#, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G, and Ab. Each key is defined by the subset of notes which you get when you sing the seven notes of the major scale, "do re mi fa so la ti". So, "key" is all about which 7 of those 12 notes do you play. Different keys have different numbers of sharps or flats, but the key of C has no sharps or flats. The key of G has one sharp, which is F#.

If you are playing a kalimba in G, but you are playing with a piano player, the piano player will know many songs in many different keys. As the kalimba player, you have many choices:

1. Wait for the songs in G and play along with those.
2. Songs that are in neighboring keys on the circle of fifths will have only one note out of seven that will not be common to your kalimba's key, and you could just avoid that note once you know what it is.
3. You could retune the problem note, effectively changing the key of your kalimba. This takes the expert kalimba player about 20-60 seconds to add a flat or sharp on the two or three relevant tines on the kalimba.
4. You would think the chromatic kalimba would be a way to deal with playing in different keys—but, in practice, the chromatic kalimba is really only good for a few keys close to the natural key of the kalimba (i.e., whatever key is on the front tines).

Ah, but there is one more solution: a Keymaster collection. If you ever see harmonica players, you may notice that they carry several harps with them, one for each key. Now kalimba players probably don't want collect a kalimba for every key—that would cost over $1000, plus be rather cumbersome. But not all keys are created equal. Common keys for guitar music include G, C, D, A, and E. Bb is seldom used on the guitar. Common keys for a brass band include Eb, Bb, F, and C. Singers might want a series of keys situated 1.5 steps apart, such as F, Ab, B, and D. The 4 kalimbas in your Keymaster collection can be tuned to the 4 keys that work best with the other instruments you routinely accompany or that work best with your voice.

52 Exercises for the HT HotShot-11

Of all the Hugh Tracey kalimbas available, two of them do not have books yet: the Hugh Tracey Chromatic kalimba and the HT HotShot-11 (formerly known as the Celeste Junior Diatonic). Today, we take the first step to remedy this situation by releasing a collection of great exercises for the HotShot-11. 52 Exercises in KTabS/PDF format is now available as a download for $5. These exercises will appear in the future book, which will also include a CD. By the way, the Thursday Tips of the Day have been dealing with the HT HostShot-11, featuring some material from this collection.

New: Sansula Repair Service

The Hokema Sansula is a delicate kalimba with the mysterious Ake Bono Japanese pentatonic scale, mounted on a frame drum to give out of this world resonant effects in the air cavity formed between the frame drum and a flat surface it rests on. Its weakness: if you drop it or beat it or jab it, it will break.

Kalimba Magic has announced two solutions to this problem: first, the Deluxe Sansula, made with a goat skin drum head, is robust and will not break from normal use. Then a few months ago, the Sansula Renaissance came to the market - a Sansula using a synthetic Remo drum head.

But now there is a third solution: If your Sansula head has been damaged beyond reasonable repair, you can send the hoop and kalimba to me with a check for $50, and I will send you a refurbished Sansula. Broken Sansulas are sent to Germany where they are repaired, and we return you a different repaired Sansula. Note that the kalimba and the wooden frame drum hoop need to be in good condition.

Broken Sansulas can be sent to me with a check for the repair at:

Mark Holdaway
P.O. Box 12974
Tucson, AZ 85732