Mark Holdaway

Earlier posts help you prepare. This post deals with the day of performance. When you are playing a kalimba performance, the most important thing is to have a good time. If you are happy and having fun, it will show. The audience will see you, really see you, and this gives a huge opening for the music. So, the big advice is that the day of your kalimba performance should mostly lead up to you being relaxed and having fun. I like to run through all of the songs I will be performing. Sometimes, like if I am performing on a shipping day, I will have to work and won’t

Exploring Chords for Accompanying the Sansula in Standard Tuning Get yourself a sansula today A main part of the philosophy of western musical instruments is to provide as many sonic possibilities as possible – hence the piano keyboard, with seven octaves of fully chromatic notes. A main part of the philosophy of the kalimba is that it has exactly the notes it needs to create a particular scale or a particular song. Every note on a kalimba is important and useful. A particular kalimba’s scale, or tuning, will span a particular “music space” which contains the musical possibilities of that scale. And there are “way many” music spaces and there

30 Years of Kalimba Performance Experience Might Assist You on Your Kalimba Path Everyone has their own learning style, from totally alone wandering in the wilderness, to working with a book, to a full teacher-student relationship. And no matter what our personal style is, good tips from a veteran along the way can be of monumental importance. Being a great kalimba performer stems directly from being a great kalimba player. We may be deep into our own learning journey, and a few good words of advice could be very very welcome. And if we are starting out then how great of a gift is it to get a brief guide to

The notes of a song don’t always stick to standard lengths. Here’s how we indicate the unusual notes in tablature. The standard types of notes last 1 beat, or 2 beats, or 4 beats… or going the other way, 1/2 beat, or 1/4 beat, or 1/8 beat. What if you want to play a note that lasts some other length, like three beats, or 3/4 of a beat? There are two symbols in the standard notation system – dots and ties – that are used to modify the length of the basic note types to give you a note that lasts other lengths. In this post we elaborate on how longer

Most kalimbas struggle to play their high notes clearly. Learn various ways of adjusting tines to improve their sound. Fixing a buzzing tine is one way to make tines sound better. Click here to learn how. We all want all of our kalimba’s notes to sound strong and hearty and resonant. But on most kalimbas, the highest notes can have a serious lack of resonance. There are physical limitations to the range of notes a kalimba can play. If you try to lengthen your lowest, longest tine, it will play a lower note – but as you go lower, the note will not sound as good, because you are trying

This is a great way to develop your playing and improvisation skills Play along with one of these backing tracks. It’s fun! Hey, get out your 17-Note kalimba in C and jam along with these simple chord progressions. We show you the chord progression and the notes in each chord, and we give you a sound file that embodies that chord progression. This is a fun way to learn how to jam on your kalimba.   When most people think of improvisation, they tend to think of just making things up and going wild. However, most compositions, and also the best improvisations, follow rules. Different rules will make different types

It plays Moody, complex, mysterious music. And here’s a new eBook just for the Middle Eastern-Tuned 17-Note Kalimba Get the17-Note Kalimba Middle Eastern eBook This Middle Eastern tuning makes amazingly beautiful, powerful, exotic music. It is really a journey I can recommend to most anyone. The music you can play in this kalimba tuning takes you around the world in its musical expressions. I find this music to be so beautiful,  I recommend you purchase the download just to listen to the recordings that come with, even if you don’t play kalimba. If your 17-Note kalimba is in the key of C, you will need to slightly modify the tuning.

Some meditative thoughts on the relationship you have with the instrument in your hands Abisha writes: “How do I meditate using the kalimba?” I answer: “How can I play kalimba and NOT meditate?” Actually, I have a bit more to say about it than that.   It seems that there is not much to playing the kalimba – that it is easy to pluck it, and that you can’t really control anything about the note, except for when you play it and how hard you pluck it. But to me it’s much more subtle. Can you find it in you to play a perfect note? Meditate on one note Simplify. Zoom

We’ll have 72 of our most popular chromatic kalimba model available again very soon! Pre-order your box alto chromatic kalimba today for shipment by July 15 2019 It’s time to celebrate! On July 4 we Americans celebrate Independence Day. (Although I would actually rather be celebrating Interdependence Day – because the one truth that I have learned about the world economy is that we are all in this together.) I celebrate in this article with a short video of the patriotic American song “Stars and Stripes Forever” played on the Alto Chromatic Kalimba. And there is another reason to celebrate: the Box Alto Chromatic Kalimba will be back in stock