December 12, 2016

You can start at different points in the cycle to make different songs Click to download Tablature for the mbira song Chaminuka Sometime between 600 and 1000 years ago in the Zambezi Valley of southeastern Africa, something amazing happened – four-phrase mbira music was born.  This revolutionized the music that had been played for a very long time, and greatly increased its sophistication, sort of like going from nursery songs to Pachelbel’s Canon. The new musical structure was complex enough to support a wide range of songs.  In fact, new songs in this vein continue to be created today. There is basically an infinite supply of mbira-type music. In this

UNLOCK YOUR KALIMBA-PLAYING POTENTIAL WITH THESE MUSICAL BUILDING BLOCKS THAT WORK WITH ANY DIATONIC KALIMBA Here we present seven of the most basic building blocks of kalimba music. They are based on simple thumb routines which the body can easily remember.  (This group is directly applicable to diatonic kalimbas, ones that cover the notes “Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do” in some scale.) Each of these routines can be applied in different ways to different tines, and this will produce different music based on the same sort of easy pattern. For each of the seven basic moves, we give you a very short bit of tablature to illustrate