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Mark Holdaway

Practice TIP: Play With Your Eyes Closed!

Playing without looking helps you improve in so many ways Archival Practice Tips Part of what is so great about playing the kalimba is that it is all right there in front of your eyes.   You can see the entire instrument, all its notes, all that it can do, in one glance.  You might not understand it yet, but you can easily see that it is understandable.  Map the shorter kalimba tines to higher notes and the lower tines to lower notes.  Simple, right? But an even more important tip I can give you is to NOT look at the kalimba as you play. In this tip we are going

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Blog
Mark Holdaway

1000 Kalimbas, Almost Ready To Go

A huge shipment just arrived from South Africa – here is what happens next Most of the kalimbas I play – and consequently, most of the kalimbas I sell – are Hugh Tracey Kalimbas, made by African Musical Instruments (AMI) in South Africa. When I started Kalimba Magic in 2005, I ordered about 200 kalimbas, and it took about six weeks from when I placed the order to when they arrived at my door. Now, I order over 1000 kalimbas at a time, and it takes six to nine months for the kalimbas to get here.  Why so long?  Supply chain issues, more orders from other folks, bigger orders, exchange

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Blog
Mark Holdaway

My Mother’s Art

Your creations can mean a lot more than you think Off Loom Weaving by Patricia Holdaway, c. 1978 “It looks like something that used to be incredibly beautiful that a huge beast started to claw at,” my friend John said when he saw the new piece of art I was hanging on the wall in my college dorm room.  My mother had just mailed me one of her off-loom weavings, and I proudly hung it on the wall. Later, my roommate’s cat actually would pull out the lower-hanging clumps of yarn, thereby fulfilling John’s prophecy. Over the 35 years that I have had my mother’s weaving hanging on various walls,

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Blog
Mark Holdaway

The Brain and the Kalimba – 2

Can you really pay attention to two things at once? You can, but it’s a skill you have to cultivate When I was 24, I finally learned how to talk and play guitar at the same time.  Until then, when playing guitar, I could hear what was being said, and could understand it, but I could not speak or even answer simple questions.  Why could I not speak and play guitar at the same time?  I suppose the “music generation” part of my brain overlapped too much with the “speech generation” part of my brain.  And how, exactly, did I learn to speak and play at the same time?  And

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Blog
Mark Holdaway

The Brain and the Kalimba – 2

Can you really pay attention to two things at once? You can, but it’s a skill you have to cultivate When I was 24, I finally learned how to talk and play guitar at the same time.  Until then, when playing guitar, I could hear what was being said, and could understand it, but I could not speak or even answer simple questions.  Why could I not speak and play guitar at the same time?  I suppose the “music generation” part of my brain overlapped too much with the “speech generation” part of my brain.  And how, exactly, did I learn to speak and play at the same time?  And

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Blog
Mark Holdaway

The Brain and the Kalimba – 1

They say you can only think of one thing at a time – kalimba requires you to think of two things at a time! When I was 10 years old, my father said “I’ll give you a dollar if you can go 10 seconds without thinking of a brown bear!”  I jumped up from the dinner table, went to stand in the corner, and started chanting “White bear! White bear!” and got a huge laugh from my whole family. But truth be told?  I was actually thinking of brown bears the entire time I was trying to fill my mind with images and words of white bears. Playing kalimba is

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Blog
Mark Holdaway

The Brain and the Kalimba – 1

They say you can only think of one thing at a time – kalimba requires you to think of two things at a time! When I was 10 years old, my father said “I’ll give you a dollar if you can go 10 seconds without thinking of a brown bear!”  I jumped up from the dinner table, went to stand in the corner, and started chanting “White bear! White bear!” and got a huge laugh from my whole family. But truth be told?  I was actually thinking of brown bears the entire time I was trying to fill my mind with images and words of white bears. Playing kalimba is

Read More »
Blog
Mark Holdaway

Practice TIP: Structure vs Play – 1

Structure grounds and binds you to a song or tradition. Play sets you free. Go to product page for “Kalimba Doctor Tuning” Most people who pick up a kalimba will have an experience rich in play. There is always a little tug of war going on between structured playing – learning what other people have done on the kalimba between the present and 1000 years before now, or figuring out your own song in a detailed manner, and free play – just playing what comes into your head, or more likely, what your thumbs decide to do. My best playing and my best experiences occur when I am able to

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Blog
Mark Holdaway

Practice TIP: Make it Fun!

If playing kalimba is fun, you will want to do it more Archival Practice Tips There are many different ways to practice kalimba, and you should find the way that makes you happy.  Don’t worry about the “right” way, but do search for the way that is right for you. Everybody plays a bit differently, and everyone learns in different ways.  You do want a challenge so that you feel you are getting better, but you don’t often want something that is so challenging that it is not fun. I share some of the ways that I practice kalimba, and rate them by how fun I find them to be.

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