Over the years, we have created a lot of books, instructional materials, videos, and articles about playing Christmas music on your kalimba.

For your pre-pre-Christmas consideration, I have collected it all in one place for you. If you want to spend money, we have plenty of books, ebooks, and CDs for you to take advantage of. If you don't want to spend money, we have created a lot of free resources, and they are all listed here.

You might ask why I have so many resources for playing Christmas music on the kalimba. It is because I love the simple, charming, and beautiful sound of Christmas music played on the kalimba.

I'm Mark Holdaway. founder and director of Kalimba Magic. About once a month, I write a newsletter delivering a brand new batch of blog posts concerning the kalimba and how to play it. Some of these posts will get a few thousand views - those are the ones I write for myself. Other posts receive over a hundred thousand views, and apparently those are the ones that I write for the rest of the world.

This is a collection of our 10 most-viewed Kalimba Magic posts. At least some of them will likely be useful to you.

The simple 9-Note Sansula, or Hokema B9, has been a spectacular, emotive instrument that people have loved for almost 20 years.

Now it's time to move up to the B11. While the Sansula is charming and beautiful, there are precious few songs you can play on it. The B11 has another name - the "Melody". That is because it lends itself to making melodies with simple accompaniment,

In other words, if you seem to be at a dead end with the Sansula, you might want to check out the B11, because there is so much more music you can do with it!

When you are playing a kalimba performance, the most important thing is to have a good time. If you are happy and having fun, it will show. The audience will see you, really see you, and this gives a huge opening for the music. So, the big advice is that the day of your kalimba performance should mostly lead up to you being relaxed and having fun.

I like to run through all of the songs I will be performing. Sometimes, like if I am performing on a shipping day, I will have to work and won't have time for a run-through. In that situation, I try to do a run-through the previous night.

More kalimba performance advice?

The 10-Note and 17-Note kalimbas work really well together, mainly because their notes (tines) match exactly. 

This book is a broad exploration of some of the ways that two kalimbas can fit together. Typically, the 17-Note parts will be more advanced than the 10-Note parts, but not always!

Playing kalimba together is an amazing way to be close to another human being. This book is intended to help people get close together. Grandparent and grandchild? Yes! Parent and child? Yes! Friends? Yes! Lovers? Spouses? Yes!!

I invite you to learn more about this ebook!

If you have an 8-Note or a 10-Note kalimba, you may have learned "Joy to the World," "Ba Ba Black Sheep," and "Doe, a Deer" or various other simple songs. But what do you do next?

Typically, when someone masters a kalimba, they search for another kalimba challenge - usually a bigger or more exotic kalimba. However, I offer you another path, and it's right in front of you! A very simple modification of your 8-Note or 10-Note kalimba will transform it into a new tuning, with a new repertoire - essentially providing you with the challenge of a new kalimba without having to acquire another one.

Just how do you accomplish this very simple transformation? I'll show you! And once you have your "new" kalimba, it will be capable of playing all the songs in our newly published ebook 32 Songs for the 8-Note (or 10-Note) Kalimba.

One kalimba associate asks: "How do I choose the songs to play at my kalimba performance?"

Well, you want songs that connect with meaning and significance to you... and also to your audience.

Even though your kalimba is probably not a traditional African instrument, I ask you to consider it nonetheless as a sacred instrument, capable of touching people, moving people, healing people, and helping people be their best. Of course, that means both the musician and the audience. Seemingly a tall order, but the magical kalimba is suited for it.

And the songs you choose can play into this narrative.

If you would like to play specific songs on your kalimba but you don't know where to start, or if you feel you haven't really connected well with your kalimba, you might want to consider getting the 6-Note Pentatonic Song Book.

When discussing thumb pianos, people use the instrument names kalimba, karimba, mbira, mbira dzavadzimu, and mbira nyunga nyunga - sometimes with specific intent, and sometimes nearly interchangeably.  Where are these different names from, and what do they mean?

Why would anyone retune their kalimba? Well, I hope you DO tune up your kalimba every few weeks or so, at least to maintain its correct original tuning. However, once you learn the skills required to brush up the kalimba's tuning, you also possess the skills required to explore alternative tunings - you just need to push or pull the tines a bit farther than the very delicate moves required to fine-tune the kalimba.

But again, why would someone retune their kalimba to a different tuning? Because different musics are available to different tunings, and because different tunings help produce different emotional expression. If you ever start to get bored with your particular kalimba and what you can do with it, you should consider changing to another tuning to see what new music might speak to you.

This article walks you through four different possible retunings for the 11-note pentatonic kalimba. So, if fear or uncertainty were preventing you from taking the plunge and retuning your kalimba, you now have the tools and guidance to jump into the river and baptise yourself in the flow of ever-changing musical possibilities. Really - once you begin to explore new tunings, it's a whole new world!

Kalimba Magic is the premier website for information about playing, tuning, and taking care of a wide variety of kalimbas. We also have the largest variety of kalimbas available for purchase anywhere. What follows is an overview of KalimbaMagic.com which describes its major categories, gives some description of each one, and has links so you can get there instantly. Kalimba fundamentals, FAQs, history, how-to-play, the buyer's guide, and a great deal more await you!

In my mind, most songs that you can play on the Treble kalimba are also possible to play on the Alto kalimba, and this offers great flexibility.  But there are some songs that are written for Alto that require its low notes and are just not possible on the Treble which by nature is in a higher range.  You could retune the Treble into a Bb Treble, and then it would behave just like an Alto with two extra notes.

But there is one (very famous) song that I don't think can be done properly on either the Alto kalimba or the Bb Treble kalimba - it requires the high notes of the Treble kalimba in standard G tuning, and that song is "Silent Night."

The kalimba, with its unique bi-directional note layout, makes playing scales a bit difficult because you have to zigzag your way up and down the tines, plucking first one on the right side, then one on the left, then the right, and working your way up or down the scale. It is easy zigzagging at the bottom of the scale, where the tines are close together in the center. The higher you go, the higher the chance of misplacing a finger, and zagging where you meant to zig. Fortunately, the painted tines will help guide you (a painted right tine is one note higher than the corresponding painted left tine), but this is still the most common type of error.

The flip side of the difficult scales is the easy chords. What makes it hard to play scales makes it simple to play chords. Chords on kalimba are really easy. Compared with the guitar, every one of whose chords has a different geometrical shape, the kalimba is painless - all the chords have basically the same shape.

Learning to drive the chords on your kalimba can tap into the most wonderful music this little instrument has to offer...

Many people born in the last couple of decades were first turned on to the sound of the kalimba by the animated TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender. The kalimba was regularly featured in the sound track.  The kalimba can really pull on your heartstrings in a sweet, simple way... a perfect accompaniment for animation!

In this post we feature two different Youtube videos by people who acquired their kalimbas in order to learn how to play some of the kalimba music from Avatar: the Last Airbender:  one on the Hugh Tracey D Treble Kalimba, the other on the Goshen 11-note Kalimba.

In addition, we're providing free tablature for these little songs, for a visual map of how to play them.

When I get 10 requests for something, I know it's time to sit up and listen. Total strangers to Kalimba Magic were finding their way to my eShop and sending requests for some strange new kalimba setup that was suddenly insanely popular on YouTube.

The kalimba on the Youtube video was not in its factory setting; it was a 17-note kalimba that had been modified by the player.  I could put the Hugh Tracey 17-note Treble Kalimba in that tuning. So indeed, I could fulfill those new requests, and I set about doing just that. And thus was born the Mbira Style Treble Kalimba.

I never really understood the big deal about "The Wizard of Oz" when I was growing up. We had a black and white TV, and I remember in high school, a friend asked me "Hey, you know how when Dorothy lands in Oz, everything is suddenly in color?" I answered "No..." and suddenly realized part of why I had never gotten the movie! The music from this movie did not become a favorite part of my life as it did for so many.

But when you are a performing musician, it is not always about what pleases you most. In music, you also are playing for the audience. And I can tell you, no song succeeds in touching listeners' hearts quite like "Over the Rainbow" played on a tiny little music box (the kalimba).

You may very well know that right now, the most popular kalimba video in the world is by Acoustic Trench, playing "I Can't Help Falling in Love With You" (made most famous by Elvis Presley in 1961) on an alternatively-tuned 17-Note kalimba. Trench's tuning made a bass scale, going from the center to the far left - and a treble scale, going from the center to the far right. He played melody on the right and accompaniment on the left.

Well now - let's just say that right now you are sitting in the catbird seat, because you have choices. You can learn to play the song in this alternative tuning; or you could learn to play it in the generic tuning for the 17-note kalimba, where both thumbs are involved in playing the melody.

This Middle Eastern tuning makes amazingly beautiful, powerful, exotic music. It is really a journey I can recommend to most anyone. The music you can play in this kalimba tuning takes you around the world in its musical expressions. I find this music to be so beautiful,  I recommend you purchase the download just to listen to the recordings that come with, even if you don't play kalimba.

If your 17-Note kalimba is in the key of C, you will need to slightly modify the tuning. You should find that it is not too difficult to change the tuning of your kalimba to this Middle Eastern tuning.

The standard types of notes last 1 beat, or 2 beats, or 4 beats... or going the other way, 1/2 beat, or 1/4 beat, or 1/8 beat. What if you want to play a note that lasts some other length, like three beats, or 3/4 of a beat?

There are two symbols in the standard notation system - dots and ties - that are used to modify the length of the basic note types to give you a note that lasts other lengths. In this post we elaborate on how longer composite notes are built with dots and ties, and how to play them.

Everyone has their own learning style, from totally alone wandering in the wilderness, to working with a book, to a full teacher-student relationship. And no matter what our personal style is, good tips from a veteran along the way can be of monumental importance. Being a great kalimba performer stems directly from being a great kalimba player.

We may be deep into our own learning journey, and a few good words of advice could be very very welcome. And if we are starting out then how great of a gift is it to get a brief guide to the best habits to develop so we have the best shot at growing into a good musician and competent performer?

This post comes directly from the heart of someone who has been there, knows all the ropes, the pains and pitfalls and pleasures to becoming a master at kalimba, and he provides invaluable insight and memorable pointers for all kalimba players, gently encouraging self knowledge, hard work, and joy. 

                                                                                    - Sara Edelman, editor at Kalimba Magic

A main part of the philosophy of western musical instruments is to provide as many sonic possibilities as possible - hence the piano keyboard, with seven octaves of fully chromatic notes.

A main part of the philosophy of the kalimba is that it has exactly the notes it needs to create a particular scale or a particular song. Every note on a kalimba is important and useful. A particular kalimba's scale, or tuning, will span a particular "music space" which contains the musical possibilities of that scale. And there are "way many" music spaces and there are also "way many" kalimba tunings. 

One of my most favorite activities is to explore new kalimba tunings and their music spaces - ie, the different possibilities these tunings create.

However, as much as I love to explore and map all of these exotic music spaces, sometimes I forget to cover the most basic tuning of an instrument. In this post, I go back and analyze the Sansula's standard mystical and enchanting tuning, and then I relate the Sansula's tuning to exactly how I accompany the Sansula on my guitar. 

The Celtic D Karimba is designed to play Celtic music in the key of D major, or B minor, or E dorian mode. Not all Celtic music is in D, but it is a common key for Celtic music.

With two rows of interspersed tines, the spacing between adjacent tines on the same row is significantly increased. This makes fast melody playing easier (because the tines are spread out more), but it makes glissandos and chords a bit more difficult (also because the tines are spread out more).

We gather all of the instructional resources for the Celtic D Karimba in this one spot.

Hey, get out your 17-Note kalimba in C and jam along with these simple chord progressions.

We show you the chord progression and the notes in each chord, and we give you a sound file that embodies that chord progression. This is a fun way to learn how to jam on your kalimba.