The Alto Kalimba is one of the most versatile kalimbas - there are a dozen books and downloads available for it, and there are thousands of songs you can play on it, including traditional African music.

The Hugh Tracey Alto Kalimba
Taj Mahal introduced America to the Hugh Tracey Alto Kalimba in 1973 when he played it on the Flip WIlson show, and since then it has become one of the most popular kalimbas on the planet. I got mine in 1986 and still play it almost every day. I can recommend it to almost anyone. There are more than a dozen books and instructional downloads for the Alto, meaning you can spend years or decades progressing on this instrument. While these books and downloads all assume you have the standard G tuning, there are also several alternate tunings that you can explore.
There are several different models of Alto Kalimba, the most popular one being the Alto kalimba mounted on a resonant box with an electronic pickup.
This is truly a bright shining star of a kalimba.
Alto Kalimba Video
These videos will help show you what wonders the Alto kalimba has in store for you, and will even help you to create your own wonders. Click on one of the gray circles below the video to see a different video.
The Story of the Alto Kalimba in Photos
Each of the images in the slide set below tells part of the story of the Hugh Tracey Alto Kalimba, which has been one of my favorite musical instruments for 30 years now. Click on the far left or right arrow keys, or on a gray circle below the photo description to go to the next one.
Books and Downloads for the Alto Kalimba
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Alto Fundamentals Book
The Alto Fundamentals Book is a good introduction to the Alto kalimbas. The book also applies to the Bb Treble kalimba, the D Treble kalimba, and the front side of the G-tuned Chromatic kalimba. It covers technique, chords, scales, left-right exercises, some songs. 32 pages with CD. -
Alto Primer
This booklet is a great introduction to the instructional resources available for the Alto Kalimba. The first half shows you over a dozen musical approaches you can take to a simple African-based musical phrase, going from elementary to complex, and lots of fun along the way. The second half of the booklet includes one song or exercise from each of the different Alto books and downloads. Truly a great place to start with the Alto Kalimba. -
10 Trad. Karimba Pieces for Alto
These 10 traditional African karimba pieces were given to Andrew Tracey and Paul F. Berliner through Jega Tapera, an African elder from Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), in the 1960s. The age of these pieces could be as much as 1000 years old. Arranged by Mark Holdaway for the Alto kalimba, they are provided in both KTabS and PDF format. MP3s of all the songs played in this download are provided to allow you to hear how the pieces go, even if you aren't able to run KTabS on your computer. Available as download only. -
11 Adv. Trad. African Pieces for Alto
This download consists of a ZIP FILE containing tablature PDFs, KTabS files, and MP3s for each of 11 traditional African Karimba songs, arranged for the Hugh Tracey Alto Kalimba in G. These songs and their multiple variations were collected from the literature by Ivodne Galatea, with assistance from Mark Holdaway.
Important note: these songs were created on the African Tuned Karimba, also known as the mbira nyunga nyunga, and it is possible to play them on the Alto kalimba, but it is more challenging, and will require some special tricks - in other words, learning them will involve work, but these pieces should be worth the effort you put into them.
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Kalimba Carols for Alto and Treble
25 favorite Christmas carols, ranging from simple, single note melody lines, through two note harmonies, full harmonies, and counterpoint. 32 pages with CD. 75% of this book is for the Alto kalimba and 25% is for the Treble kalimba. These are easier than the advanced carols collection. -
Adv. Christmas Carols for Alto
Arranged by Mark Holdaway, this collection is available as a book or as a download. Both have 20 favorite Christmas Carols; the download provides KTabS files, tablature PDFs, and MP3s of the songs played by KTabS, letting you hear how each piece goes, with or without the KTabS program. The arrangements here are very close to those I use when I perform these carols at Christmas time. -
Classical Alto
Arranged by Mark Holdaway and Sharon Eaton, this collection is available in book form or as a download from KTabS. Both have 20 favorite classical melodies, ranging from simple to very challenging. Including Bach, Handel, Holst, Pachelbel, and many others, this assamblage will keep you busy for months, if not years. -
Alto Hymnal
Arranged by Sharon Eaton, this book has 50 hymns, ranging from simple to difficult. Amazing Grace, How Can I Keep From Singing, Jesus Loves Me, There is a Balm in Gilead, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, and 45 others. -
African-American Spirituals for Alto
"African-American Spirituals", arranged by Mark Holdaway, is available as both a book and as a download. There is documentation that the African kalimba was first brought to the New World by African slaves in the 18th century (evidence of kalimbas was found in Brazil and the Caribbean, also in New Orleans which is the only known North American site). The Alto kalimba was created by the Englishman Hugh Tracey, based on an ancient African instrument, with the objective of using the kalimba to play Western music and appeal to Western ears. The Alto kalimba is a unique composite of African and Western traditions, as indeed are African-American spirituals. The download provides both KTabS and PDF format, and a CD is included with the book.
Blog Posts on the Alto Kalimba
These are the new series of blog posts, which started in December 2015. As newer posts, the quality is generally higher than the archival newsletter articles. Many of these posts give away free tablature and have sound recordings to illustrate the music.
Archival Newsletter Articles on the Alto Kalimba
These are archival newsletter articles from 2005-2015, and offer a lot of information on the Alto kalimba, as well as a lot of free tablature. Be aware that some links within these archived articles may not work, but in the near future we will correct this, and all the material will be available in another format. Click on the grey circles below for 14 great articles.
Every Alto Kalimba has 15 tines mounted on a box or a solid wood board, and comes tuned in the standard G tuning (so it will work with the books). It is available in many other alternative tunings.
Hugh Tracey Alto Kalimba
Hugh Tracey Alto Kalimba with Pickup
Hugh Tracey Celeste Alto Kalimba
Hugh Tracey Celeste Alto Kalimba with Pickup
C-tuned Alto Kalimba
C-tuned Alto Kalimba with Pickup
Goshen 15-Note Kalimba
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Standard G Tuning
The Hugh Tracey Alto Kalimba's standard tuning comprises two octaves of the G major scale. The lowest and highest notes are both G, which is the root note, making this tuning easy to understand. Furthermore, there are tons of books and downloads that work with this tuning. The A, Ab, G, F#, F, and E tunings are all basically the same pattern, all with the root note at the bottom and the top notes - hence they can all read the same tablature and use the same books. Why would you want another key other than G? If you don't know, stick with G tuning.
The letters on the tines in the diagram are the names of the notes each tine is tuned to. The numbers are the degree of the scale - that is, 1, the root note, is "Do" as in "Do, Re Mi, Fa, So". The number 5? count up, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, which would be "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So". Of course, 8 is the "Do" at the top of the scale, and is the same note name as the bottom "Do" of the scale - that is, 1 and 8 are the same note. The "Do, Re, Mi..." scale is synonymous with the major scale, which is the standard reference for all other scales. Some other scales will have lowered versions of some of the degrees of the scale - a minor 3rd is a lowered, or flattened (taken down a half step) 3rd, and we refer to it as "3-". Some scales have raised or sharpened (raised a half step) versions of some of these notes, and we indicate them with a plus sign, as in "4+". And some scales will completely skip some degrees of the scale - the major pentatonic scale skips the 4 and the 7. Stick around, and you'll learn a lot about music through the little kalimba.
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Evil Tuning
Maurice White of Earth, Wind, and Fire used a 17-Note Treble Hugh Tracey kalimba tuned to an A minor pentatonic scale with redundant notes, wowing people on songs such as Evil and Kalimba Story during the 1970s. The tuning on our Evil Alto kalimba is analogous to the tuning of Maurice White's Treble kalimba.
In the tablature diagram, the painted tines in the middle of the left side and the middle of the right side are both tuned to A notes, and the next lower tines on both sides are tuned to G notes. This novel tuning permitted Maurice to perform a fast trill on either of those notes by alternating quickly between the left and right versions of either the A or the G, twice as fast as you could trill any single note played on just one side.
The lowest note is the "7-" or flat 7, also known as a minor 7, and it leads into the root note, A = 1. Other notable features are the minor 3rd or "3-", and the missing 2 and 6, and the root note A at both the top right and the top left. This type of scale came out of the work of Chicago jazz musician Phil Cohran, who employed an electric kalimba with a similar tuning when he recorded with Sun Ra in the 1960s. Part of the draw of this scale is its distinct African "feel" - one of Hugh Tracey's research findings was that about 40% of traditional African kalimba tunings use a pentatonic scale like this one. Phil Cohran inspired Maurice White with his use of the kalimba as a symbol of Africa, the pentatonic scale to represent African music, as well as his use of those redundant notes in building musical excitement.
Coming soon: Evil Alto Sound Recording
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A minor Blues Tuning
There are actually several "blues scales". I've known about this type of blues scale for 40 years. It is almost exactly the same as the minor pentatonic scale, and it would go great with the Maurice White Evil Tuning. It has an extra note thrown in, the Eb, between the 4 and the 5 in each octave. You can think of it as a raised 4 or "4+" or as a flat 5 or "5-". In contrast to the Evil tuning, this one does not have any redundant notes. In this tuning a C is added at the very top, with two "5-" notes, the Eb's that are both on the right side. In the language of the blues, the "5-" note is also called the "blue note"; in the classical world, the "tritone"; in medieval times it was called the "devil's interval" and its use was forbidden by the Church!
This is not the same tuning Kevin Spears uses, but it is quite similar in nature.
Coming soon: recording of the Alto A minor Blues Tuning.
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Middle East Tuning
The Middle Eastern tuning was my first alternative tuning, in 2001 of all times. -
C-tuned Alto
There are two broadly different ways of changing the key of your kalimba. One way is by retuning all the tines in the same way (i.e., pulling out every tine by a half step, which will retune the standard Alto kalimba from G down to F#). The other way is to retune around the Circle of Fifths - changing just one note per octave will transform both the key and the note layout of the instrument. An example of this is going from the Alto's standard G tuning to the C tuning shown here. The two F# tines are retuned a half step down to F, and the root note becomes C.
Why would one want to change an Alto kalimba to C from G tuning? Three reasons come to mind: (1) you might need to play kalimba in the key of C to accompany a vocal song for it to be in your vocal range, (2) you can play similar music but in a significantly different range with respect to the root note, enabling you to potentially play a lot of different music and (3) you might need to play in the key of C to play with other musicians - I use my C-tuned Alto to play with my marimba band Baba Marimba.
Here's the best thing about the C-tuned Alto Kalimba: this is one of the easiest retunings, so you can do it yourself.
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G minor Tuning
The G minor tuning is conceptually very close to the standard G major tuning. Every note that is present on the standard G Alto is also on this kalimba in the same place with the same letter, but the F# is now F (F also called F natural), the B is now Bb (B flat), and the E is now Eb. (By the way, these are the same basic changes that must occur to turn a G Treble into a Bb Treble.)
It is instructional to compare the G Major tuning with the G minor tuning. The root (1), the 5th, the 2nd, and the 4th, i.e., the most important notes for chord progressions in any particular key, are the same for G minor as for G Major. The G minor tuning has a flat or minor 7th (designated as 7-), a flat or minor 3rd (3-), and a flat or minor 6th (6-). The notes that are changed in this retuning do cause a pronounced change in the emotional flavor of the scale.
Why would you want this tuning? To more completely understand and experience the minor key, with the psychological advantage of having the root note of the minor key in the bass. G minor also goes with Bb major, so this would be a good kalimba to play with the Bb Treble.
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F Major Tuning
The F tuning is made from the G tuning by simply tuning every note down by a whole step. The role each tine plays in this scale - that is, the 1, the 5, etc., do not change, so anything you learned on the G Alto will be easily played on this tuning, just a step lower. And unless you have perfect pitch, you won't even realize this instrument is different from the G Alto, since it seems to play just the same as the standard G tuning. -
A Major Tuning
To tune to A major, every tine on a standard-tuned G Alto is pushed in just enough so that the whole instrument rises a whole step in pitch. Just as with the F Alto, unless you have perfect pitch you will not really even realize this kalimba is different from the G-tuned Alto. Every song you play on the standard G Alto can be played on this kalimba, it will just sound a step higher.
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In Summary
In addition to F, G, and A, the Alto kalimba can also be tuned to E, F# (Gb), and G# (Ab). Why don't more people get their Altos tuned down to E, a great key in which to play along with guitar? The body size of the Alto is designed to resonate down to the low G note, but it starts to lose resonance at F#, more in F, and more still in E. You can compensate for this by playing in a gourd or on a table - a larger resonant structure that will help amplify the lower notes. Playing through a pickup also helps with the reproduction of notes from the low range of the kalimba.
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