News and Announcements

  These two CDs reflect the time when I was highly focused on my Hugh Tracey Alto and Hugh Tracey Treble Kalimbas. These are fully orchestrated band songs, with kalimba usually one prominent voice among other instruments: guitar, mandolin, recorder, bass, and drums. There is some pretty inspired music here, and it is available now for the first time as a digital download. From Two Thumbs Up: Robert’s Dream: From Two Thumbs Up:Kicked by the Snow: Get Two Thumbs Up Download CD Between the D & L: The Dark and the Light CD Between the D & L: Morocco CD Between the D & L: Where is the Rain? Get

Hey, I am just being myself. I am able to capture kalimba music in tablature and detailed notation. I can show you exactly what you need to do to achieve some particular music. My tablature based books can teach you amazing things, in great precision. But that is not the only way to learn to play the kalimba. There are a whole bunch of high level concepts that can help with your kalimba playing. Very simple things, like: play on one side for a while… then on the other side for a while. Or: if you can’t find the note you are looking for… look on the opposite hand of

    With every 17-Note Kalimba in C we sell, and with every Hugh Tracey Treble Chromatic Kalimba we sell, we include a hard copy of the 32 page booklet “Intro to 17-Note Kalimba in C”. This is a tablature-based booklet that shows you the ropes on the kalimba. Due to customer requests, this booklet is now available as a PDF download with live links to sound recordings. This is for the 6-painted note setup scheme. eBook: Introduction to the 17-Note Kaimba in C We also have another version of this download created for the 5-painted note setup: eBook: Intro to the 17-Note Kalimba in C in 5-Painted System And

I grew up strumming folk guitar and singing the songs of my country. I had a wonderful music teacher in elementary school, and I quickly learned to love music – especially the Americana songs we sang in music class. As I grew up, I learned a deeper and more present side of Americana – Bob Dylan, The Band, Woodie Guthrie… and the diverse strands of the fabric of our country’s rich tapestry of musical traditions. And then, in 1986, I fell in love with the kalimba, and started my own kalimba journey. I played Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan songs on the kalimba. The kalimba is like that. It will

Welcome – Know that the Sound Files for this ebook are coming very soon. Section 1 files are up today, I will aim to get a new section worth of sound files up every two days, so we will be done in March 2023 sometime. OK – I Will Be Getting a Video Up Here Soon – Mark Holdaway ( Feb 21 2023) If you have feedback about the “365 Days/Volume II” ebook, please submit them to me through the CONTACT ME page.

With so many Moon-10 Kalimba Tunings, how do you pick one? How do you keep track? There is a cool new tool at Kalimba Magic that will help you understand the nature of each Moon-10 Tuning: the Moon-10 Virtual Kalimba. To access the Virtual Kalimba, simply go to the Moon-10 Product Page, and click on the “TRY TO PLAY” tab, or click on the icon in the lower right corner with two hands on a kalimba.   When you click on one or the other, up pops the Virtual Kalimba tab. If you are on your computer, try clicking on the playing tips of the tines, and you will hear

I love the enchanting feeling of this Middle eastern Kalimba tuning! As you can see, this tuning pretty much plays itself! (I haven’t written any books for this Desert Moon Tuning… but you don’t really need a book for it.) If you order a Moon-10 Kalimba, make sure to select “Desert Moon Tuning”. The Moon-10 Kalimba is usually tuned to a C pentatonic scale… but there are many other tunings you can put this really cool kalimba into. I absolutely love the Desert Moon Tuning… one of the exotic tunings I created for the Moon-10 kalimba a few years ago. Forget about learning to play this song or that song

Hokema has long made top notch kalimbas. They became really famous when they made their Sansulas with two rows of narrow, very smooth tines. The two rows really improved the playability of the instrument, but with only 9 notes? The music it produced was beautiful, easy to create, but rather limited in scope. However: this here B15 kalimba? I haven’t been this excited to play a new kalimba in a long time! I am overjoyed. Now Hokema has released the B15, a 15-Note instrument covering exactly two octaves of the key of G major. This is the same tuning as the Hugh Tracey Alto Kalimba. But as the notes lead

I’m sorry to say that the promised Volume II of “365 Days to Kalimba Mastery” is not finished. That is, if you are one of the 100+ people who pre-ordered it at half price… you will have to wait another few weeks.  You can still pre-order it now for  half price at $6.  I’ll come through… hopefully by December 1 2022. I do have a good track record – I was able to put out Volume I on time… and I have written over 100 kalimba books and kalimba downloads over the last 17 years. Creating these books and helping people learn to play so many different kalimbas has been