January 11, 2016

Usually when you pluck a tine, it sustains for about 5 seconds – but you can put a stop to that! One of the charms of the kalimba is how the tines ring clearly and slowly fade away.  You cannot control exactly how long the tone will last, it has its own natural decay, like plucking a strong on a harp.  Playing kalimba is a bit like playing piano with the damper open. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Sometimes you want a note to be staccato – ie, played very short.  Why?  Sometimes the music just calls for a short or abrupt note.  Sometimes you need to

An upper octave pattern can be shifted to the lower octave, but it’s handedness is reflected This is something important to understand.  Just because you can play a pattern in one octave doesn’t mean that it will be easy in the other octave, because it will be a mirror image of the other octave’s pattern.  Strangely, your brain may have to totally relearn the phrase in a different octave in spite of the similarities in the music. The insite in this tip – that when you shift a phrase up or down an octave, you need to learn to play the mirror image of the pattern you started with –

Because two notes separated by an octave are on opposites sides of the kalimba, you can play them at the same time! The two previous tips illustrated how to play the upper octave G major scale and the lower octave G major scale on the Alto kalimba.   This tip combines the upper and lower scales and plays them at the same time. The upper octave scale on the Alto kalimba goes left – right…. while the lower octave scale goes right – left.  This means that while your left thumb is playing the middle G, your right thumb can play the low G.  When the right thumb is playing the

Many kalimbas – such as the Alto, the Treble, and the Pentatonic 11-Note kalimbas – have a range of two or more octaves.  In my mind, this is where the playing really gets to be interesting.  This tip relates the lower octave scale to the upper octave scale on the Alto kalimba. The Alto kalimba tablature here starts at the bottom and works up.  The first measure shows the upper octave of the G major scale, while the second measure shows the lower octave of the G major scale.  The two scales have the exact same note names: G A B C D E F# G (you can tell by