The Magadi Kalimba Jam Set

Buy this set of great, innovative kalimbas for under $200. Great workmanship, great sound, different musical tendencies… but all with compatible scales.

Improvising

A fantastic way to use kalimbas is to improvise on them. Just make stuff up. The kalimba is like a special playing field that is tilted in the direction of success by removing all the “bad” notes. The remain notes define some space of coherent musical possibilities. Your job as an improvisor is to explore what is possible.

If you look on YouTube, you will see thousands of people working on learning specific songs. I am actually one of them. But working on specific songs is to take away the fire and magic of the kalimba. Just inventing things on the kalimba, quite often you discover you can fly! It can be an experience of pure joy.

The M17 kalimba has a “regular” kalimba setup – meaning it will be the most obvious instrument to play known songs or predefined melodies on. The other instruments have oddball note layouts that are a bit harder to figure out. This means it will be less likely that you will be totally in control of these kalimbas. Hence, these kalimbas will interject their own ideas. They will lead you down musical paths that you might not have thought of. In other words, the Olive-9, Moon-10, and Star-13 are improvisation catalysts.

Magadi: Impressive, Innovative Kalimbas

I have been so impressed with the Magadi kalimbas for a number of reasons. Why? Because they have great materials and workmanship. Consistently good. Each has a very different sound. And each has a very different note layout. You see, an interesting note layout is great for suggesting new music to you. It will have various musics that it “likes” to play. That means, when four different people pick up these four different kalimbas, each will sound different, and each will play different music. And yet, all of these instruments in standard tuning)play some form of C major or A minor.. meaning they will all sound good together.

These four kalimbas jam great!

I have sold a few sets of these kalimbas to some people doing group work, and they love them! Put one of these in the hands of the members of your bridge club? Buy the set for your family of four? Go back in time and gift them to the Beetles circa 1962? Bring the set with you next time you double date? Or: buy them for yourself, and play a different kalimba based on your mood.

When you purchase this set of four kalimbas, you can save a lot of money over getting them individually.

Instructional Materials for These Kalimbas

Currently, we have booklets for the Moon-10 in standard C pentatonic tuning, for the M17 kalimba (17-Note in C), and for the Olive-9. This set will come with those three booklets.

The Star-13 doesn’t yet have a booklet. (I said it would be done in March, but it is looking more like April 2021.) The Star-13 comes with a tuning chart with a QR code that will take you to the Star-13 Resource Page. When the Star-13 book and download are completed, you will be able to get the download for free at this page.