Mark Holdaway

It was back in 2002 when I shocked everyone in the Tucson music scene by showing the true extent of the magic that is possible when you play the kalimba with great skill and great emotion. (Here is a more recent version of the Christmas Kalimba Medley, played on a Kalimba Magic 17-Note Bamboo kalimba.) Back in 2002, I performed 12 favorite Christmas Carols in 12 minutes. The waves of beauty and joy kept coming, overwhelming everyone’s expectations of what the kalimba could do. The music kept climbing in intensity, accelerating in tempo, until the final victory lap of “The Christmas Song” rang true with its unsung words: “Although it’s

The years was 2002, before I started Kalimba Magic. I performed a 12 minute medley of 12 different Christmas Carols, on my Hugh Tracey Alto Kalimba, to an audience of about 200 people at the TKMA Holday Party in Tucson Arizona. All I will say is that every one of the audience members will have remembered the magic of that music for the rest of their lives, barring severe memory loss. That extended moment is where Kalimba Magic really started, though the Kalimba Magic BUSINESS would not come to life until 2005. Over the years, I have notated my full advanced arrangements for a wide variety of kalimbas – 15-Note

The Alto Kalimba is different from the standard 17-Note Kalimbas that currently dominate the internet Here is how they are different, and why you might want one: The Alto Kalimba only has 15 tines, instead of 17 BUT the Alto tines are wider than the 17-Note tines (5mm compared to 4mm). …which means the Alto Kalimba is physically larger than the 17-Note If you have large hands, you are going to find the Alto to be a better fit And, the larger tines? I find are easier to play. The larger box size makes for lower notes, and a different kalimba sound (in G rather than in C). And the

People who bought the Chromatic Kalimba Download have been waiting for months for all the sound recordings to appear. They are there now, and the links in your PDF will magically work now! The Chromatic Kalimba is a bit of a bear. You see, the front side notes are the same as the Alto Kalimba notes, and the back side are the chromatic notes that are usually skipped on most kalimbas.  It is hard to use those back side notes, because you cannot see them. BUT – the front side is just exactly like the Alto kalimba – you can totally avoid the confusion of the back side notes just

Christmas Songs on Kalimba Christmas carols are one of my favorite things to do on the kalimba. I have spent thousands of hours working out dozens of carols, and I’ve written the arrangements out in tablature for a whole bunch of kalimbas. Here is a list of kalimbas you can play carols on, arranged from the simplest kalimbas to the hardest and most capable kalimbas: 8-Note Diatonic Kalimba in C 10-Note Kalimba in C Moon-10 in Silver Moon Tuning Moon-10 in Gold Moon Tuning Hugh Tracey 15-Note Alto Kalimba Hugh Tracey 17-Note Treble Kalimba 17-Note Kalimba in C Chromatic Alto Kalimba Chromatic Treble Kalimba Each week, until we run out

Most kalimbas sold today are in the key of C Major – and yet, most pop music today uses minor scales. That just means, you should check out the minor scales, they will open a whole new world of music to your kalimba playing. First: Why Scales? Each scale has its own sound. The scale sort of sets up the shape of the musical universe that a kalimba inhabits… it shows you something of the sort of music that the kalimba creates. And it turns out that each kalimba has multiple scales. On top of that, we at Kalimba Magic can put any scale onto any kalimba (well, within certain

Anthony is not the fellow that I was expecting to sell Kalimba Magic to. I was thinking I would sell it to someone who ran a music store already, or maybe to one of the top kalimba players. Or someone who made kalimbas already. Then again, I myself was an unlikely person to start Kalimba Magic, as I had no experience running any business at all. But it was my baby, and I nurtured it as it grew. So, who exactly is Anthony Ghimenti? Mark Holdaway passes the torch to Anthony Ghimenti at the New Kalimba Magic headquarters in California. KM: Anthony, what inspired you to buy Kalimba Magic? AG:

One of the key things about Kalimba Magic that makes it unique is the diversity of instrument brands, models, tunings, and setups. It turns out there are only 40 different basic models of kalimba in our inventory, but that number is multiplied hugely by the different ways we change the kalimbas. Why do we change them? Each different tuning plays different music, and each has a different feeling. Sometimes I’m the one who discovers the cool tuning. Sometimes it is a customer or another kalimba player. Sometimes the customer asks if I have anything in G minor, and then I go and invent a specific G minor tuning for some

Did you ever hear the theme song from the TV show “Weeds”? Every episode featured a different version of the 1950s social commentary song by Malvina Reynolds, “Little Boxes”. Less known is her song “Magic Penny”, which has the profound lyric: “Love is something if you give it away…. you end up having more!  It’s just like a Magic Penny – hold it tight and you won’t have any. But lend it, spend it, and you’ll have so many, they’ll roll all over the floor!” And I have to admit, that is a large part of my strategy at Kalimba Magic – to share with the world, to give Kalimba