Learn to play the “Kalimba Solo for Lotus”

Tablature and Staff Notation for the Entire Song

Thousands of people have been wanting to learn to play SaReGaMa’s “Kalimba Solo for Lotus” on the Lotus Karimba, and if you are one of those people, I’ve got good news for you.

In 2009, New Age musician SaReGaMa celebrated the birth of his daughter, Lotus.  At night he would play her to sleep with improvisations on his Hugh Tracey Karimba.  The Karimba had started out its life in a traditional African tuning, but by the time it got to SaReGaMa it had fallen out of its original tuning, and he began to invent new tunings.  After being in a tuning for a while, SaReGaMa would often document the tuning and what it could do by making a video accompanied by a high quality sound recording and posting it to YouTube.  He did that with his “Kalimba Solo for Lotus” on July 22, 2009.

While the Lotus Kalimba video was appreciated by those who watched it, it was a sleeper. It got 20,000 views in its first two years, and a few hundred thousand views in most of its third year.  Then in late 2012, it went viral on reddit.com, and got half a million views in one week.  All of a sudden, everyone seemed to want the Lotus-Tuned Karimba, but there was one catch: nobody on earth made this instrument.

Kalimba Magic quickly stepped into the void.  We learned how to do the retuning (this is not trivial; it actually took us a while to accomplish this tuning reliably), and now we offer four different Lotus Karimba models, in addition to two other of SaReGaMa’s innovative tunings.  As SaReGaMa is the one who created the demand for this instrument, each year we send him a 10% commission payment for all the sales of the instruments he inspired.  We have also created a general instructional book for the Lotus Karimba, a great instructional download for the Freygish Karimba, and a free 12-page introductory download for the Air Karimba. And now, we are happy to announce the availability of the new instructional download for the Solo for Lotus.

This new download has all the instructional material you need to learn to play SaReGaMa’s number one kalimba hit, Kalimba Solo for Lotus. Included in this ZIP file are: a 32 page book-style PDF including 19 pages of Kalimba Tablature and 10 pages of two-handed staff notation for the full Lotus Solo; the KTabS file for the tablature; a PDF with a single staff (for reading on a piano, guitar, or just sight singing); and SaReGaMa’s MIDI file made from his own original staff notation.