First Look Inside was the first song I wrote on Alto Kalimba and also the first YouTube video I made, and it is also my best performing video with over a million views. You can learn how to play it with this free tablature download.

You can download the tablature for Carol of the Bells for free!

Check the Tunings Section of this page to see how to change from standard Alto tuning to the Middle Eastern tuning.

The C-Tuned Alto has a very simple retuning but produces an instrument that plays fundamentally differently from the Alto in standard G tuning.

The Big Vibration is both a song and a story I tell that features the song.

A lesson for the Alto Kalimba

Another Alto Kalimba Lesson

You can actually tell the order of the notes by tine lengths. The longest tine is the lowest note. The next note is the painted tine just to the left, and the third note is the adjacent painted tine on the right. There is a general rule: for every painted tine on the left, there is a corresponding painted tine on the right, and the right tine will be one note higher in the scale than the corresponding one on the left.

When Kalimba Magic started in 2005, my son Tim was helping me set up the Kalimba Magic web page when I asked him to take a photo. He asked me what I wanted to convey in this image, and I said I wanted the photo to indicate my close relationship with my Alto kalimba, while also illustrating the regular pattern of the tines. I wanted the photo to show a hint of how I have really played long and hard on this kalimba - can you see the rut where my thumb nails dug into the wood in the foreground? I wanted to evoke the gentle nature of this remarkable instrument. But most, I wanted the image to reveal how Light shines into the kalimba and is reflected back to the world in all sorts of amazing ways. Then he took this photograph.

Since 1954, the Hugh Tracey kalimbas have come with selected tines painted. What use is it to paint 1/3 of the tines? To help you keep your place on the kalimba, to interface the left notes with the right notes, and to help you translate notes from written kalimba tablature. If you follow the stories of the paired kalimbas in this photo collection, you will also realize that the painted tines can help you relate one kalimba to another. At Kalimba Magic, tine painting has become very important to us, and we paint them ourselves. When you purchase a kalimba, you can take the luck of the draw as to tine painting (blue is the most popular color, which we always have prepared), or you can choose from blue, green, black, white, red, or all unpainted tines.

Originally, Hugh Tracey viewed the Treble as the primary instrument, with the Alto being a nice accompaniment instrument. Increasingly over the last 40 years, the Alto has taken main stage in the kalimba world. In my recordings, the Alto often forms the meat of the song, and the Treble is added for beautiful frills. Many of the instructional materials exist in similar forms for both the Alto and the Treble kalimbas. The Alto and Treble Fundamentals Books, the Hymnals, the Classical books, and the Advanced Christmas Carols books can, for the most part, be played with Alto and Treble together. Our Sweetheart Deal is a discounted Alto and Treble Kalimba pair, both with pickups and a book for each kalimba, that can introduce you and a friend to the joys of two voices singing as one.

Another concept of interest is the Hugh Tracey Bb Treble Kalimba - which I originally developed from a normal Hugh Tracey Treble kalimba in G. Because of my deep affinity for the Alto kalimba, and not feeling very comfortable with the Treble, I decided to see if the Treble could feel more like an Alto. I tweaked the Treble slightly - I retuned and repainted its tines such that it looks and feels and sounds like an Alto, only pitched a little higher. Its root note in the bass is Bb, instead of G, which means that Bb is the "key note", or #1, or "do", in the "do re mi..." scale, and that it is the lowest note on the kalimba. A kalimba's longest tine is where we are most likely to want to start playing, and if it is also the root note of the scale as it is here, it enables the player to understand the kalimba almost immediately, making it very easy to jump to the root (which is the most stable note), due to its primary position. The numbers on the tines (which indicate the degree of the scale) on the Alto tuning chart match the numbers on the Bb Treble tuning chart, so they play the same, but the Treble is pitched a minor third higher, which means that the notes don't match exactly. This is like putting a capo on the third fret of a guitar.

Why is the Bb Treble interesting? In addition to speaking with a lovely and charming voice, the Bb Treble kalimba is useful in that it offers a new key. If you sing with your kalimba, and the G Alto is pitched too low to accompany your voice, the Bb Treble might be just what you need. Similarly, if you are playing with other instruments, you might want to play along with them on kalimba on a song that is not in the key of G. The Bb Treble can be tuned to A, Bb, B, and C, so it has a lot of possibilities in helping extend your range as an accompanist on kalimba.

Here is another way, beside Sweethearts, that you can enjoy the Hugh Tracey Treble and the Alto Kalimbas together - this time as a matched pair. Both kalimbas are altered to make them easy to play together; every tine on the Treble is one octave above its corresponding tine on the Alto, until you get to the bottom two Treble notes, which have no analog on the Alto Kalimba.

It might seem that one should be able to easily play a standard Treble and a standard Alto kalimba together. But despite the fact that there is a 13 note stretch on each that is identical, there are a lot of songs that you can play on one but not the other. I learned hundreds of songs on the Alto that require the lowest two notes...and when you pick up the Treble in standard tuning, you are missing those two notes, so you cannot play that song on the Treble, without a major change in location of notes which necessitates relearning the song. Similarly, songs you might learn on the Treble that require the upper four notes cannot be easily transferred to the Alto. However, everything you can play on the matched Alto can also be played on the matched Treble.

The Matched Pair can be tuned to the keys of G, F#, F, and E.

Every Hugh Tracey kalimba is mounted on a body made of kiaat wood. Kiaat is a native African hardwood tree, and is also known as "muninga", among many other names. It grows in northern South Africa, in nearby Mozambique, and some areas in the Zambezi river basin. Hugh Tracey observed some traditional kalimbas that were made of kiaat, and of all the woods he experimented with, he liked this wood best. Furthermore, at that time he could purchase inexpensive scrap wood left over by furniture makers, who used kiaat wood for its durability. The heart wood of kiaat is usually a moderate to deep brown, and can have red highlights in it. The sapwood from the outer inch of the tree is blonde or yellow. Finally, there can be black lines accentuating the grain. Since every board cut from a kiaat log will have some sapwood at its outer edges, it is not uncommon to have a beautiful two tone kalimba, with both white or blonde sapwood and brown heart wood. At Kalimba Magic, before we ship, we always remove the kalimba from its cardboard box to check the wood, the pickup, and the tuning. We take the time to marvel at the gorgeous wood that chances to come to us. We then choose a paint color that will compliment the unique wood patterns, and paint the selected tines. We finish off by straightening up any tines that are out of place or not perfectly aligned, and perfecting the tuning.

And we make sure we thank the people in Africa who make these works of art, and help give them a sense of pride for the beautiful job they do in selecting wood for, and assembling, these exceptional instruments.