Little Bits of Music – Playing Scales 7

Edging Up and Down the A minor scale

This series of tips is about scales and how useful they are for the kalimba player.

This is a great sort of exercise to help you gain familiarity with your kalimba. Each measure only has three different notes – for example, in the first measure, it goes A B C B A. It even rests a little extra time on that last note, to give you a chance to prepare for the next part.

And what is the next part? This exercise, which I call a “spider,” inches up and back down… and then does it again, a little higher. And again, each time edging higher and higher.

(By the way, the tablature here is for a 17-Note Kalimba in C, but the concept and even the tablature is the same for many other types of kalimbas.)

You can do this exact same spider exercise in any scale. It is just a matter of starting on a different note.

And this is a particularly simple spider exercise – just playing the three different notes. You can make other types of spider exercises.

The entire point of the spider exercise is to help you gain familiarity with going up and down little scale segments.

Use the painted tines to help you as you crisscross the kalimba.