THE KALIMBA MAGIC SHOP

This karimba's note layout is an ancient African design, permitting the playing of several traditional karimba pieces. Great for students studying Africa. Available ONLY at Kalimba Magic - $39.

This Student Karimba, or Primal Karimba starts out life as a regular Catania 8-Note kalimba, but we retune it to the African Karimba's core notes - the eight ancient notes that form the basic parts to many traditional karimba tunes from southeastern Africa.

The student karimba can be tuned to G (to go with the Student Karimba Book), to C (so it can play with other 8-Note kalimbas in the standard C tuning), or it can be tuned to A so that it can play with the Hugh Tracey African Karimba. This student karimba acts as a great stepping stone to the full 17-Note karimba, and the songs you will learn on the student model will blossom forth in fullness on the Hugh Tracey African Karimba.

Now available - a new book for the student karimba. The book starts out with some simple songs and progressive exercises to get the player up to speed, but then covers 16 traditional African pieces. The basic parts for most 17-note karimba tunes utilize only the 8 core notes - the most ancient notes on the karimba - which just happen to be the notes we gave you on this instrument. We have taken the tablature for the full karimba songs and arranged them for this 8-note karimba.

While it is not known for sure, Andrew Tracey asserts that this is the original kalimba tuning and note layout and dates to about 1300 years ago, when Africans in the Zambezi Valley first started using metal. Kalimba Magic is the only seller that provides the 8-Note instruments in this tuning, and Kalimba Magic is the only seller that provides the Student Karimba Book to help you play some amazing music on the most ancient instrument.

There are several tuning options. Western tunings in the keys of A, C, or G are good if you are going to use this with other western-tuned instruments (guitar, piano, kalimba). The African tunings give you a real flavor of African - octaves and the 5ths are perfect intervals, but the 3rd, 7th, and 6th lie between the western major and minor intervals.