Hello! I bought this 20eur kalimba off Amazon - which might be the answer, but it had such good ratings that I thought it might be okay.

Is this sound normal at the higher notes, or is it broken, or just cheap?

It also has a weird squeaky vibration sometimes that I couldn't record. The book that came with it said if that happens, I should put a piece of paper through the notes....also normal? That seems odd to me

Also this is my 2nd musical instrument in life - I've been playing the piano for almost 30 years. After one day of this Kalimba, I'm finding it rather easy (but still loads of fun). Should I return this and get a 34 or 41 key kalimba?

Apparently, they sell their kalimbas in Purpleheart wood. I'm smitten by the looks of this

2 2 7 6 5 3 2
1* 7 5 6 3 5
7 2 7 6 5 3 2
7 7 5 6 5 4 5
7 1* 1’ 7 6 7 1’ 7 6
1* 7 5 2 1’ 2’
2’ 2 7 6 5 3 2
1’ 7 5 6 4 5

There were three drunken maidens
Came from the Isle of Wight
They drank from Monday morning
Nor stopped til Saturday night

When Saturday night it came, me boys
They wouldn’t then go out
Not these three drunken maidens
They pushed the jug about

Bach is truly magic. Many works can be played on the kalimba with very little arrangement and the sound reminds of a pipe organ. Hope you enjoy it!

I've been wanting to buy a lingting kalimba for a while, but I noticed that they're all out of production, the k17a, the 17p, etc. Do you know if they'll be back on the market?

Buenas noches este es mi primer post, hace poco tengo está kalimba siempre quería una hueca de 34 teclas para tocar cuando estoy en lugares con mucho ruido. Pero la tecla d2*** en especial no suena nada bien.

Me gustaría saber si tienen algún consejo de como solucionar este problema.

También consultar si es normal que las últimas 4 teclas de los extremos tengan ese sonido en la kalimba, parecido a golpear una barra de metal hueca( no sé cómo describirlo) con ese sonido que emiten no se escucha con claridad la nota que se está tocado?

Adjunto el vídeo para que puedan escuchar, y toque algunas melodías, se puede observar como afecta esa nota d2**

Sinceramente me gustaría poder solucionar ese problema de esa tecla

Gracias de antemano!

Bendiciones!

About 8 years ago, we started experimenting with hexatonic tunings on our kalimbas, and this one is still one of our favorites.

It's based on the C major pentatonic scale (C D E G A), but with one extra note, B.

It's interesting how just one extra note can change the whole feeling of a scale. To our ears, it sounds a little dreamy. Not really "sad" like we often think of minor scales, but not exactly "happy" like major scales either.

We've been using this scale in different keys for years and still haven't grown tired of it.
How does this tuning sound to you?

Hey lovely people!

My first Kalimba just arrived, and I've been messing around with it a bit and I absolutely adore it. I played a few very basic songs like Scarborough fair, but there is one song I really want to learn which I can't find online, "The Power" from BG3.

I managed to find "down by the river" and "weeping dawn" but not my favourite song.... Does anyone have a video or tabs for this song? Thanks a lot in advance!!!

Hi there!

I want to install a pickup on my Chill Angels 34 key. But I know nothing about pickups and how to properly connect them to kalimba. Do you have any advice?

Hi, I recently purchased a chromatic kalimba, but I'm having a bit of trouble with the higher tines. I've tried searching for similar issues on the internet, but without any luck.

Basically, when I pluck a tine, nearby tines also vibrate. The higher the plucked tine, the stronger the vibration of the neighboring tines seems to be.

I've tried securing the bridge more firmly and adding some material under the tines, but nothing seems to work. The only thing that seems to help is gently stroking the tine along its length rather than plucking it from above, although the neighboring tines still vibrate to some extent.

I suspect the issue is mechanical, since the vibration itself doesn't seem to create resonance with the other tines. However, I still can't seem to find a fix.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue or found a way to solve it? Thanks to you all.

I'll add a Pic of the exact model of kalimba found on internet.

Hey guys i got a kalimba a couple weeks ago and i think i learned the basics so i want to try playing some of my favorite songs on it are there any websites or apps that can turn them into kalimba tabs?

I don't like the overly high-pitched ones and want something deep low and calming please

Hi everyone, I am a beginner on a 21 keys kalimba, can someone help me with a tab for 'Ganga ke kinnare ' by Bunny and sagar. The song is about sitting on the banks of river ganga, it's the kind of melody. I have attached the YouTube musical video link.

Books from left to right: Enjoying Kalimba in an Ensemble, Misa’s Kalimba Selection, Kalimba Showa Songs - all published by Yamaha - with 15, 30, 20 songs, respectively.

I spotted a few new (to me) kalimba books and ordered them. Books have the advantage of getting me away from screens for a bit. These are all on the easier side with nice collections of beginner to intermediate songs. They come with downloadable audio and video.

The first one is a duet book with pieces for two and three kalimbas (or multi-track recording), the third one has Showa era song (mid 1920s to 1989), and the middle one is a book by YouTuber Misa. Misa's book has tine numbers in Japanese, the other two have Arabic ("normal") numbers also. All three books are for 17-key kalimbas.

Knowledge of Japanese isn't needed for these books, except for the numbers in Misa’s Kalimba Selection, but there is a tine layout with the Japanese numbers included and it's easy to remember.

I've had my 17 key kalimba since my sister gave it to me as a birthday gift, and for the longest time I just accepted that some notes came out muted or buzzy no matter how clean the rest of the song sounded. I figured it was a build quality thing, maybe the tines needed adjusting, maybe the instrument itself was just mediocre.

Turns out it was almost entirely my thumb angle. I was plucking straight down into the tines instead of gliding slightly upward and off the edge, which meant I was basically choking half my notes before they could ring out. A video from a street performer in Kenya (not trying to namedrop a channel, just describing what helped) showed this upward flick motion and I tried it on "Married Life" since that's the piece I always use to test any change in technique.

Night and day difference. The notes that used to sound dead now actually sustain, and I'm getting way more dynamic range just from pressure control instead of fighting the instrument. My left hand still needs work on the lower register jumps, I tend to overshoot and clip the wrong tine when moving fast, but that feels like a separate problem to chip away at.

Anyone else had a technique fix like this that felt almost embarrassingly simple once you found it? I spent two years assuming it was equipment when it was just how I was approaching the tines the whole time.

A while ago, I bought an acrylic mini kalimba... and it's terrible, out of the 8 notes, there is 1 dead note and 3 that are buzzing.

Can I save it by replacing the body with a wood block, or is the problem with the tines?
Would I also need to replace the metal parts that hold the tines in place?

If anyone has any experience with this, please let me know.

Hi All,

My 10-year-old has an 8-key kalimba she received from her grandmother, but the music book doesn't make a lot of sense with it. It refers to a kalimba where the longest tine is a C, but hers is G. Online, the maker says that her kalimba is in the key of C. However, the book references F/4, which her kalimba doesn't have.

I am adding pictures to show what we are working with.

Please help me figure out how to get this sorted. Do I need to buy a different book/kalimba, tune/label it somehow? For reference, my daughter can play piano and read music. Her teacher is good with theory and could theoretically help her transpose, but that seems so onerous across all the songs that she won't do very many of them. She is a fanatic for folk songs and especially for Christmas music, if anyone has a recommendation that would work with this instrument.

Thank you!!

Good afternoon! Hope everyone is doing alright!

I finally bought the kalimba I’ve been eyeing and have tuned it & started learning a couple songs 🐻

I wanted to check bar order. I can’t quite work it out but is it the correct set up for the bar numbers to go: 123456787654321?

Pictures to show what I mean!

Thank you 🙏🏽✨

The bottom of the board isn't flat too as opposed to one displayed in the seller's listing. Is this a fake? I bought this on Lazada.

The sound is really nice though. Probably my favourite among my current chromatic kalimbas

I was honestly a little shocked that I couldn't find a kalimba cover of A Narcissus Lullaby from Genshin anywhere on the internet. Almost every other track from the game seems to have been covered already, but I couldn't find this one anywhere.

Is it particularly difficult to play, or does nobody really care about it? 🤣😭

Maybe some kind souls on Reddit know where I could find sheet music or tabs for a standard 17-key kalimba, and perhaps lend a helping hand to a lost amateur like me

https://youtu.be/3hQSUMOTtu0?is=zKkQJnXJ2lOWA-zQ