Mark Holdaway

At Kalimba Magic, we give you the tools to succeed on your kalimba journey. The kalimba has great depth and breadth, and you can gain a lot from the resources we have arrayed here for kalimba players at all levels. The “Learn to Play” section is a perfect place to help you start your journey. Our job is to help you to understand your kalimba, how it is set up, and how to keep it sounding sweet and in tune. We invented Kalimba Tablature in 2004 – of course we are the experts! Tablature is much easier to read than staff notation is – it is just a map of

Our new system works much better than our old system. In my mind, our instructional downloads are the best thing we have going at Kalimba Magic. I love creating the music, the lessons, and arrangements.  Creating these kalimba ebooks is my super power. Too bad it was so hard for so many of my customers to get those ebooks. I often had to send them download links “by hand” in emails. Kalimba Magic updated its web site to Word Press in December 2020. Before then, the Kalimba Magic instructional downloads often did not work right. While I still see some problems with customer’s downloads, this system is working much better

For use with the 11-Note Hugh Tracey Pentatonic Kalimba. Here is the intro to the book: The G Major Pentatonic Scale: The G Minor Pentatonic Scale: Why would you want a pentatonic kalimba? It is harmonically simple – a good choice for new kalimba players. It is easier to play than other kalimbas, due to the large tines and extra space between the tines. It has the same scale as the Native American Flute – meaning it can access that same ancient culture space through its music. In fact, primitive cultures all around the world use the pentatonic scale. In other words: take away a few notes from your regular

The 21-Note Kalimba can use all the 17-Note/C Books. Several Chinese companies have been making pretty good 17-note kalimbas lately. They are roughly copies of the Hugh Tracey Treble Kalimba, but are tuned to the key of C. I paint my 17-Note Kalimbas in C differently than suggested by the Chinese, so that the kalimba is consistent with my library of tablature. More recently, there have been some 21-Note Kalimbas made. This post shows you how at least some of these kalimbas are tuned, and how you might paint them so that you can use Kalimba Magic materials to learn to play.   How to Tune and Paint a 21-Note