Learn to Play the 10-Note Kalimba – Revised

Four high quality instructional downloads will supercharge your kalimba journey

Kalimba Magic is the leader in kalimba instructional materials. We take that work to the next level with these four instructional eBooks for the 10-Note Kalimba in C. Three of the downloads are formatted for iPad or tablet, but you can use them on your smartphone (or any computer). Each page teaches a bite-sized bit of music. As this music is all cyclical, you repeat those four measures about a dozen times, becoming more sturdy as you go. If you want to hear what each song or pattern sounds like when played by yours truly, just touch the tablature – an MP3 will be downloaded, and you can play along with me!

The Christmas book download is formatted more like a standard book, and will print on 8.5 inch x 11 inch paper. This one is better for a computer screen or a laptop.

The 10-Note kalimba is a great place for any beginner to start. These kalimbas have just enough notes to play a whole bunch of songs, even with some chordal accompaniment, but they still have few enough tines to be pretty simple to play. Furthermore, the 10-Note kalimbas have wider tines that are more widely spaced, making them perfect for beginners.

I am so glad that I decided to take on the 10-Note kalimba and get very familiar with it. I find that simplifying to just ten easy-to-play notes has caused me to slow down and re-appreciate the instrument. I am playing more cleanly, and writing and creating great music on these instruments. Hey, if I am benefitting from playing this simple instrument, I bet it has some lessons to teach you as well.

One of the best things about playing the 10-Note kalimba is that everything you learn can be transferred to larger kalimbas such as the 17-Note kalimba in C or the Hugh Tracey Alto kalimba.

Here are the instructional materials that I’ve created for the 10-Note kalimba over the last year:

Fun and Games WIth Your 10-Note Kalimba

This book teaches kalimba through three different modalities: (1) Games and fun activities that permit the student to explore the structure of the kalimba and music on their own, making great sounds and having fun along the way. (2) A numbers-based tablature system that teaches simple well-known songs with numbers above the words that correspond to numbers marked on the kalimba tines. (3) The full kalimba tablature system that is used in the other books.

In other words, if you really know nothing about music, or if you have found the tablature in the other download books to be too difficult for you right now, start here for success. 32 pages, downloadable MP3s.

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Everything You Need to Know About Playing the 10-Note Kalimba

This ebook explores what the 10-Note Kalimba is and the kinds of music and patterns you can make with it. It has a few scales, a few chords, a few songs you know, a few songs you don’t, several challenging exercises to get your left and right thumbs working together, and a bunch of cool patterns that are both remarkably easy and really good-sounding. 58 pages, with downloadable MP3s, formatted for tablet computers.

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Easy Christmas Carols on the 10-Note Kalimba in C

How many Christmas Carols do you think you can play with only 10 notes on a kalimba? It turns out that you can play quite a few – at least 28 lovely carols – because of a very simple but ingenious trick. While most of these arrangements are quite simple and appropriate for beginners, this book will also help you fly to the next level of kalimba mastery.

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32 Songs eBook for the 8-Note (or 10-Note) Kalimba

This 75 page pdf ebook is easy to use – live links to the sound files show you exactly how the song is supposed to go, and tablature shows you which tines to play. The 32 songs come from: African, Classical, Folk, Peace, Patriotic, Christmas, African American Spirituals, Reggae, ETC! To make the F tuning: take your 10-Note kalimba in standard C major tuning, and tune the B tine down a half a step to B natural, the simplest retuning that you could imagine for a kalimba – and doing so opens up a world of new song possibilities to this very simple kalimba.

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African Music on the Student 10 Kalimba

It just so happens that the 10-Note Kalimba can play a lot of traditional African music. With it you can play the full repertoire of our Student karimba (which is Andrew Tracey’s hypothesized “original mbira”). Additionally, a few of the easier mbira songs can be further simplified to fit convincingly on this tiny monster of a kalimba.

These songs will challenge your concept of music and your concept of African music, break you out of the complacency of playing simple alternating left-right patterns, and introduce you to the mind-blowing melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic genius of the African mind of a millennium ago.

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Get Your Heart-10 Kalimba Today

The 10-Note kalimba is a great instrument to start on. With only 10 tines, it is actually pretty easy to wrap your head around this kalimba. 10 tines means 5 tines per hand, which is a pretty good number for keeping track of things. That said, I stand 100% behind this instrument as a highly capable kalimba that can play hundreds of songs and all kinds of great riffs. The four instructional downloads we offer for this kalimba drive that point home.Visit Product Page

Kalimba Duets for 10-Note and 17-Note in C

This eBook is a PDF file with live links to the sound files that will illustrate how each song is supposed to sound, for the 10-Note, the 17-Note, and for the two kalimbas together. 70 pages, including 22 duets for the 10-Note kalimba in C and the 17-Note kalimba in C.

This book of duets gives you several great ideas for how two kalimbas can fit together to make music, from unison and simple thirds harmony to continuo, counterpoint, hocket, kushaura and kitsinhira parts… and rounds. Great fun, with an emphasis on how to create beautiful music with mostly simple parts working together.

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