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Get the free C Alto tablature for this huge internet hit song Click to download Tablature for the “When I’m Gone” A few years ago, I saw a 10-year-old girl flipping her cup to this song, and I have to admit I was blown away by how well she was doing it.  Last month when I found the video for Anna Kendrick’s pop song “When I’m Gone” and connected it to the cup routine I’d seen some years before, I suddenly understood why this video has 300 million views – it takes dozens of views to learn how to do that cup jive! I put in my dozens of views –

The Evolution of Kalimbas and Channeling How They Might Have Sounded.   Kalimbas have a rich, varied, and very long history.  Early kalimbas were likely quite different from anything you have seen. Over the years/in my travels in a life focused on playing, writing, and teaching about kalimbas I have picked up two historical instruments by happenstance that to me are preciously full of history and secrets, which both compels and intrigues me. Both instruments were originally separately acquired in Africa in the 1950s… that much I know. Their stories, heritage, and sound constitute an important piece of the “genetics” of the kalimba, and I suspect that you may be

There is a lot of cool music you can do on this one – we start from the beginning

From Persian to celestial, each of these alternative tunings offers a totally different spin on this great kalimba Each different tuning offers a different flavor of music The reports on the new Hokema B11 Kalimba are all coming in glowing – people love this kalimba.  Of course, everyone loves the sterling workmanship, ease of playing, and incredible sound of the huge Hokema hit, the Sansula, but the musical possibilities and adaptability of Hokema’s latest, the B11, really exceed that of the Sansula by leaps and bounds, and the B11 carries the same quality and has a gorgeous sound too. I have just developed five cool new tunings for the B11,

A delightful musical story for children of all ages, reviewed by Tabitha Danloe This is a really sweet musical Christmas story, written and performed by Mark Holdaway.  While this combination storybook and CD set is aimed at children, I think a lot of people would resonate with its beautiful message and the lovely kalimba music that accompanies it.   On the eve of Christmas, with no gift for his own son, a poor toymaker finds an old, broken music box. He can’t repair it, but an angel appears, and she magically fixes the music box.  But the music box is no longer a normal music box.  It now has a

familiarity with octave and fifth intervals gives the basic foundation for playing traditional mbira music on the Alto kalimba These exercises will help you play traditional mbira music on the Alto kalimba African mbira music is tremendously compelling to me, and I had been working to translate it onto the more accessible Hugh Tracey Alto and Treble kalimbas for months but feeling quite frustrated.  I could not find my intuitive wisdom with this traditional music. When it came, the realization was like the sun coming up after a long dark night, and suddenly shining bright on the mountains. The issue was… intervals!  (You can hear two wonderful mbira songs right

This book shows you how to make great music in the Afroharp tuning Buy the book “Playing the Afroharp” The Afroharp is a legendary 13-note, two-level kalimba created and manufactured for only a short period in late 1960s Chicago. This instrument plays sweet, hauntingly beautiful, harmonic music, and the Afroharp’s particular tuning is at the heart of the music it makes. The Afroharp is gone, with only a few floating around in the world. But Kalimba Magic has started building instruments in the Afroharp tuning, made from Hugh Tracey Alto kalimbas with electronic pickup – just as the original Afroharp had a connection for a “high impedance dynamic microphone”, as

Listen to MP3s for Alto, Treble, Sansula, Karimba, and Lotus These are the three models of Lotus Karimba that we make at Kalimba Magic   I’ve seen it happen dozens of times – maybe hundreds.  Someone gets a kalimba with the best of intentions, they sort of connect with it, but they are afraid to really take ownership of the instrument – they doubt their own ability to tune the instrument.  And so over time, their kalimba drops out of tune, playing becomes unpleasant, and the kalimba goes into the closet. But I have also seen the opposite.  I have seen people who doubted their own musical ability and doubted

I’ve been jamming out on kalimba… playing along with Top 40 Radio! Click to download Tablature for the mbira song Chaminuka I was very disappointed on election night a couple weeks ago, as I am sure many of you were as well. Leading up to the election, I had taken to listening to more and more news and analysis, mostly on NPR and Democracy Now, and when I saw the writing on the wall, I decided I needed to take a huge break from the news. So now, when I drive somewhere, or when my clock radio wakes me up, I listen to a local Top 40 / variety radio