New: The Moon-10 Kalimba

This is one fun and relaxing kalimba to play

This is a new kalimba from China. It almost didn’t make it, as the factory where it is made in China was shut down for a few months over the Covid-19 crisis. But here they are now! The standard tuning is a C major / A minor pentatonic scale. The resonant body with goat-skin membrane makes a great wah-wah effect. The two rows of tines make for an easy division of the notes. This is a fantastic instrument for improvisation.

Each Moon-10 Kalimba comes with a soft form-fitting padded case and a 24-page instructional manual, complete with sound recordings. And it is remarkably affordable.

The Moon-10 Kalimba, jamming along with recorded piano accompaniment.

This is one happy kalimba. It sounds and feels fantastic, and with the pentatonic scale, almost everything you play will sound good.

The disadvantage: in the pentatonic tuning, there aren’t a great number of songs you can play. If you really want to learn to play songs, this might not be the right kalimba for you. However, in the C-diatonic alternative tuning, this kalimba has the same notes as the Heart-10 kalimba, meaning there will be several songs available to you

That said, this kalimba is not about reproducing songs. This kalimba is about spacing out and floating with the cosmos and letting the breeze of creatvity flow through you. It is about jamming and improvizing and having fun.

The 24-page booklet that comes with the kalimba deals only with the standard C major pentatonic tuning. Six other alternative tunings will have some instructional materials available in the near future. The possible tunings include:

• Standard C Major Pentatonic – “New Moon Tuninig”
• C Major Diatonic – “Silver Moon Tuning”
• C Minor Pentatonic – “Blue Moon Tuning”
• G Major Pentatonic – “Snow Moon Tuning”
• G Ake Bono – “Silk Moon Tuning”
• G Mixolydian – “Blood Moon Tuning”
• F Diatonic / C Bass – “Golden Moon Tuning”

I hope you enjoy the Moon-10 Kalimba. It has become one of my regular hiking companions.