Instructional Video: About Reading KTabS Kalimba Tablature

A huge part of playing the kalimba is learning to play the right notes at the right time. You can learn this be standing next to someone who is playing kalimba… but you might need to ask them to slow down so you can understand which notes to play.

Another way to do this is by playing a closeup YouTube video of a kalimba player using the same kalimba as you, in the same key. It can help to slow down the video (click the SETTINGS gear at the bottom of the video, and set the PLAYBACK SPEED to 0.75 or 0.5 to help you see the correct tine to play).

Of course, it helps if your kalimba tines are painted the same way as the kalimba you are watching! The painted tines act as landmarks. If your kalimba tines are all unpainted, try to color the appropriate tines with Sharpie Marker, which comes off which alcohol wipes.

But there is another way:

Here is a video of me helping a customer learn how to follow KTabS Kalimba Tablature

In 2004, I invented a graphical Kalimba Tablature system: a tall, stretched out map of the kalimba tines, and starting at the bottom, I place standard musical note notation symbols on the tines, indicating which tine to play, in which order. In 2005 I wrote my first three kalimba books using this tablature. In 2006, some of my first customers, Sharon and Randy Eaton, created the KTabS Kalimba Tablature Software, which implemented by tablature. I convinced Randy to program KTabS to be flexible, so that it could represent the music for any kalimba, in any tuning.

And while I create all the tablature for ALL of my kalimba books using the KTabS software, that is not the end. YOU can also create your own tablature using KTabS. If you do, you can create music that is more complex than you can play… and then you can alter it to help you learn to play it. You can insert repeat signs around a few measures that you are trying to learn to play. You can adjust the tempo to slower speads, and as you are able to play it, you can gradually speed it up.

And of course, I’ve got even more kalimba instructional downloads from which you can learn a whole bunch of songs, for a whole bunch of kalimbas!

As you may well know by now, I have retired from Kalimba Magic, and I’ve sold my business to Anthony Ghimenti. However, I have agreed to create weekly bog posts (such as this one) to help the kalimba community get the most out of their kalimba experiences, so stick with us, there is more to come!