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How to understand a new tuning, and how to make sense of the tuning charts Click to visit the first pentatonic kalimba tip The pentatonic scales have a great power, related to the fact that playing them does not require as much thought as other scales demand. They have fewer notes, and they are simpler instruments, both physically (with more space between adjacent tines) and intellectually. However, there are some important basic things that you should know about pentatonic scales, and these little bits of wisdom are applicable to almost any scale at all. In other words, learn the lessons these simple scales have to teach, and you can take those

MT Lee Anna Rasar Specializes in the 6-Note Pentatonic One of the best kalimbas to use in music therapy is also our least expensive kalimba – the 6-Note Catania Pentatonic kalimba. While there are a lot of spirituals and children’s songs that can be played on the 6-Note Pentatonic, probably its best uses are improvisational in nature. You just pick it up, twiddle your thumbs, and music comes out! Lee Anna Rasar is a professor in the Music Therapy department at University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. She has used the 6-Note pentatonic kalimba and other kalimbas extensively in music therapy. The following is from a letter that Lee Anna wrote to

Great music for G minor and Ake Bono tuned 11-Note Pentatonic Kalimbas Click to download Tablature PDF for the Ake Bono piece It turns out there are dozens of possible ways to arrange the notes into a pentatonic scale. A pentatonic scale is any scale that has five unique notes per octave, a simplification over the standard seven note major scale.  The pentatonic scales tend to sound raw, earthy, primitive. About 40% of the kalimbas Hugh Tracey encountered in his travels around Africa had various sorts of pentatonic scales, and Maurice White of the band Earth, Wind and Fire put his kalimba into a pentatonic scale to make it resonate more

A Guide to Changing from G Major Tuning to Other Exotic Tunings 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

Francis Bebey used this tuning in his song “Breaths” – what a great tuning! Click to go to Video of This Kalimba Someone called a few months back. His wife had recently died, and he was working on healing from that great loss. He had played mbira dzavadzimu in the past – and since the mbira is all about helping us to connect with the ancestral spirits, I figured he wanted some help with that. But instead of being drawn to mbira music, this man was drawn to the song “Breaths”, written by Francis Bebey, with lyrics focusing on how our ancestors live on in the physical world around us.

This 74-page PDF download has the music to about 30 traditional tunes Click to purchase 30 Trad. Karimba Download This is one of the books I’ve been wanting to write for around five years, and now, with much-appreciated contributions from Ivodne Galatea, I am proud to present this collection of tunes for the African-tuned karimba. This book is written from the point of view that the karimba is a living relic; I believe that instruments were played over 1000 years ago that had very similar note layouts to the lower half of the modern karimba . This means that the music in this collection could be very similar to the

Learn the Song Vanavogwara on Karimba In 2013, a legendary figure in African music was suddenly taken from us. Chiwoniso Maraire was a shining light, a great singer and a great player of the mbira nyunga nyunga, also known as the African tuned karimba. Her instrument of choice is of interest to us for two reasons. Andrew Tracey hypothesizes that this is the original mbira first made in southern Africa some 1300 years ago. But Chiwoniso had a more personal connection to this instrument – the mbira nyunga nyunga was the instrument played, and made famous in America, by her father, Dumisani Maraire – or Dumi as his friends knew him. Dumi

The history of the thumb piano in Africa and how the kalimba got to be a household name Hugh Tracey records an unknown karimba player I just gave a presentation on the kalimba at the OLLI-UA  (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Arizona) in Tucson, and decided to share with you the Powerpoint of the presentation (actually it’s a PDF of the Powerpoint).  A great thing about this 45 page PDF presentation is that it has many clickable links to interesting sound recordings and YouTube videos, which really make the presentation come alive.  One negative is that at a number of places, I made instructions to myself to play a

I’ve been having fun experimenting with tunings again… Kalimbula, by Hands On Drums The Kalimbula is a cool instrument that I’ve been enjoying playing in a variety of tunings.  I have tried all of the canonical sansula tunings, including the C Major I use in this video with new Kalimbula music. The hallmarks of the Sansula are: stunning tone, beautifully squishy tone modulation, and stellar hardware. How does the Kalimbula stand up to the Sansula? The Kalimbula has the exact same Sansula hardware providing its notes.  The tone of the ceramic Kalimbula bodies is somewhat different from the original Sansula, but it has a beautiful tone in its own right.