TIP: Free Blank Kalimba Tablature

Kalimba Tablature is a powerful way to save your kalimba ideas

Tablature is an alternative to staff notation. Kalimba tablature is intuitive and easy to read.  We provide blank tablature PDFs for 8-Note, 11-Note Pentatonic, 15-Note Alto, 17-Note Treble, and 17-Note Karimba.  You can download them for free, print them out, and write notes on them detailing the kalimba riffs you make up.  And if you don’t understand the rules for tablature, we can help with that too!

Before we get into the blank tablature, you might want to brush up on the rules of tablature. The tablature is a map of the kalimba’s tines, stretched out from the bottom to the top of the page. The standard symbols for musical notes are placed on the tines in the order they are to be played.

You can learn more about the details of reading and writing tablature here.

Since the tablature is a representation of the physical kalimba, each different type of kalimba will need its own type of tablature. We include here blank sheets of tablature as PDFs that you can download from the list below.

• Blank Tab for 8-Note Kalimba
• Blank Tab for 11-Note Pentatonic Kalimba
• Blank Tab for 15-Note Alto Kalimba
• Blank Tab for 17-Note Treble Kalimba
• Blank Tab for African Karimba