How to Play Kalimba (Hand Piano): Beginner Masterclass

1. Welcome!: Hi, My name is Jacob Lam. I'm a musician and a music teacher. In this course, we're going to cover the basics of learning the Columbia or hand piano. Now, we're going to look at the parts of the instrument, how to play the instrument and different notes, as well as tuning, reading tabs. And by the end of this course, you should have the basics of the Columba. Very comfortable. You'll be able to write your own songs and play any song that you find. I'm really looking forward to jumping in with you. So let's begin. 2. Why Learn the Kalimba?: Now there are a whole host of instruments out there. So why would we even bother to learn the Columbia? Well, first of all, it's got a really peaceful sound to it. It's really nice on a rainy day or to just play while sitting around on the couch. It doesn't play all too well with other instruments, but it is a fantastic solo instrument. Now, probably the best of all is how portable it is. So when you travel or when you visit a friend, you can just stick it in your backpack or in a case. 3. Kalimba Sizes: Now there are many different types of Columbus, but most importantly for this course is how many notes you've got on your instrument. Now, some columbus have less, and some have more. Of course, if you're Colombia has more notes, it's going to be easier to play some of the songs that we find. If you're Colombia has less notes, don't worry. We're actually going to be doing this course on a 17 note, columbia. And there are many with more notes than that. We're learning on one of the more average sized ones. But we can also do something fancy with tuning to change some of the notes to fit the note that we need in our song. 4. Parts of the Kalimba: Now we want to look at the anatomy of our instrument, and there's really only a couple of parts. First and most importantly, we've got the times on the Columbia and that's the actual metal part that you pluck. Now, the times here you'll notice have notes on them. That's going to be incredibly helpful as we learn the instrument. These are all attached to the body, which is the main wooden block of your instrument. Now, the body has got three holes, one in the front and two on the back. The one in the front is called the sound hole. This is where the audio is actually coming out of. The two on the back are going to be used for effects later on. 5. Tuning Your Kalimba: Now we need to know how to tune our instrument. Each of the times on the Columbia has a certain note that we're supposed to be aiming for. And as we look on them, it's going to tell us exactly what note, what letter we're going for. We're going to pair that up with an app, which I'll put on the screen right here. There are many apps out there, but this is the one that I've chosen. And we can use this app to listen to each time on the Columbia. Then we'll tune it with a hammer. Now, not any normal hammer, but a small tuning hammer that's come with your Columbia. Now, if you're Colombia has not come with a small tuning hammer, that's okay. You can always go out and get one or will also look at how to tune it without the hammer. Now, with this app, we're going to have it listened to each one of these notes. The way we tune our instrument is to physically move the metal time back and forth. So I will play a time. Okay. Now, if we wanted to adjust this note, we're going to look at the app and pay attention to the needle in the middle. If the needle is in the middle, that's exactly where we want it. If the needle is to the left, that means our note is flat, which means it's too low. We would raise our note until this needle shows us we're back in the middle. If our note is too high, we're going to call that sharp. If our note is sharp, we need to lower the note until it's again in the middle. So let me adjust how this middle note sounds. I'm going to do that with this hammer and I'm actually going to tap the metal bar the time that it's attached to. Now we listen to the same note received that that's a little too low. Now, we can always use the hammer on the other side to push it higher away from you is higher. But I personally like using my fingers on the way back up and moving the note back and forth while slightly pushing away from me. Let's give it another listen. That's closer. I'm gonna do the same process again. And just a little bit at a time, small changes actually make a big difference. That sounds pretty good. It's a long process when we consider that we have to do that for each of the notes, but don't get discouraged. Although it takes a little bit of practice, the process does speed up the more used to it that you are. Soon, you'll be tuning your Columbia quickly. 6. Holding and Technique: Now let's talk about technique when actually holding and playing our Columbia. The most standard way to hold it is with your thumbs on top and the rest of your fingers on the back. Now, with the rest of our fingers on the back, we want to be careful to not cover those two holes. We're still going to have some audio coming out of there. And when we cover them, we tend to mute the audio a little bit. Now, I'm going to play these with my thumbs and I have two options. I can either play with the pads of my thumbs or I can play with the nails of my thumbs. The nails produce a little bit sharper of a sound. Nice and loud and clear. Palms are the pads of my thumb. Still produce a nice sound, but it's a little quieter, a little more peaceful. Another way we can play the Columbia is to lay it on a flat surface and use our fingers instead of our thumbs. A little bit more like playing a piano. Now, this is going to give us the option to hit many more notes at a time. So we could play something like intervals or chords, which we're going to look at next. 7. What are intervals?: Single notes on the Columbia are great. We can play melodies, we can play lead lines. There's also something called an interval. Now, intervals are just how we measure the distance between two notes. It's important to know our musical alphabet for this. Our musical alphabet runs from a to G and then repeats over and over and over. The first note on your Columbia, right down the middle is likely a C note. And our notes work outwards from that. See every other note left-hand and right-hand. C, D, E, F, G, a, B. And the pattern repeats left, right, left, right. Now, intervals we just mentioned measure the distance between two notes. They're calling things like seconds, thirds, fourths, and fifths, but they're really easy to measure. For a second, we just count 12. So if I played C and D, I just played a second interval. A third would be counting 123. So C to E would be a third interval. And the pattern continues with a fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. Now, oftentimes on the Colombo we actually use integrals. One note is going to be playing the melody or the main part of a song. If it's a song with vocals and replaying it on a Columbia, that would be the vocal line is what we're playing. The other part might be playing harmony. And so we'd be playing two notes that work well together. And those would be intervals. 8. Playing Chords: The next thing we want to understand is how to play a chord on the Columbia. Now, cords are any three or more notes that were playing at the same time. So e.g. maybe I have a cord that's C, E and G notes all put together. Well, on my Colombia, I would find a, c, e, and g. And I have two ways to play all three notes. I could play them using my two thumbs. Or again, I could lay it on a flat surface and use my fingers, which is especially useful if the notes are a little bit more spread out. Or if we've got four notes at a time, which will sometimes get chords jump every other note. The name of the chord is whatever note we're starting on. So in the example of C, E, and G, You'll notice we started from a C note. So this would be called a C chord. We moved every other note skipping over two. If I wanted to play an F chord, it would work the same way. I would start from an F note, and then I would jump to notes to a and two notes to see. Now, considering intervals, you'll notice for cords were moving up by thirds each time. 9. Adding Vibrato: We talked about the back holes on the Columbia and how we don't want to cover them with our fingers when we're holding it. Well, now let's talk about what they're actually used for. And this may be best to practice on your own. It's a little bit difficult to pick up through microphones. These can add an effect called vibrato. Now vibrato is when we take a note and kind of make it a little bit wavy, instead of taking a single note like this, we hold a note and we let it move a little bit like this. That would be vibrato and we can do that on our Columbia. The way to do this is by covering and uncovering and covering and uncovering the back holes. So I'll play a chord. Now I'm going to add vibrato simply by doing this. This can be a fun effect, especially with notes that are ringing out for a long time. It's also nice to finish a song with a little bit of vibrato on the last notes. 10. Playing Songs and Reading TABs: Now we know the parts of our Columbia and we know how to actually hit notes and chords, but how do we translate that into playing songs? Well, this is where we get into reading Columbia music. And it's actually very simple. Columba tabs kind of look like Guitar Hero or Rock Band. If you're familiar with the game, the notes come at you or they drop down from top to bottom. You get a page that shows you every note on your Colombia. Then you read it coming down at you. So the note that hits you first is the first one that you'll play. Over on the left side. It's going to tell you the beats per minute or BPM of the song. This is something you can put into a metronome which keeps beats for you to make sure you're playing at a proper pace. Now, That's good to know when you're comfortable with the song. But as you're learning the song, you can always practice with a metronome just to get comfortable with the notes themselves. Now, you'll see some of the notes are written a little differently. Maybe they're filled in, maybe they're not. Maybe they have bars on the left side. And this is where we get into note timing. See a metronome keeps count or beats for us. Every click you hear counts for one beat. Now, these notes are held for different amounts beats, and that sounds difficult, but I promise it's really not. A whole note is held for four beats. So we would play a note and we would count 1234. Half-note, half of a whole note. It's held for two beats. So we'd play a note and we would count 121212. A quarter note is one beat, so we would simply count 11111. An eighth note is fast, it's held for half of a beat. So for every click you here, you would play two notes. Now, you may also come across some notes that are on the same line and they hit you at the same time. Well, these are notes that we would play together. So if we encountered a, C, E, and a G, we'd play those at the same time and we know by now we'd be playing a chord. So let's practice these tabs and see if we can actually play a song on our Columba using them. 11. Song: Ode to Joy: Here we're going to look at Ode to Joy. It's a classic song and we've got the tabs for it on the screen. So can we play this on our instrument? Give that song a try. Yourself. Practice it until you're comfortable with it, and then we'll move on. 14. How to Write Down Your Songs: Now playing songs and finding songs to play that you love is a ton of fun. But what if you're playing on your instrument and you come across something you made that you love. Well, you can write your own Columbus songs down using a free app to make your taps. The app is on the screen here. Now, just like with the tuning app, there are many of them out there, but this is a free one that won't cost you any money and can be a lot of fun to use. 15. Cleaning Your Instrument: We know the parts of our Columbia and we know how to actually play the notes and even find and write songs that are fun to play. But how do we take care of our instrument? Well, one of the most important parts of taking care of your Colombia is cleaning it. You'll notice, of course, that your instruments made of wood. And so like any other wooden instrument, we want to be careful with how we clean it. When we're cleaning the tines. We can do so with a little bit of soap and a warm, damp cloth. We want to make sure that we dry the tines thoroughly so that they don't rust. That's one of the major problems with times is that they can rust if they stay wet. In fact, for that very reason, it's smart to just wipe them down with a cloth when you're done playing it as well. Now, for the body of your instrument, it's very similar. We don't want to use soap, but you can use a damp warm cloth to wipe the body of your instrument and then dry it thoroughly as well. Since it's wooden, we can always use a little bit of wood, oil or finish to keep it fresh and happy. When we're wiping the body, we want to be sure to wipe gently to not remove any of the oils are finished that are already on there. 16. Storing Your Kalimba: The other important part of Columbia maintenance is how to actually store your instrument. The biggest and most important thing about storing is making sure that the temperature and humidity are consistent. Wooden instruments don't really like rapid temperature changes. In fact, you can use me as a cautionary tale because I once kept an acoustic guitar in the car in the winter. And of course that acoustic guitar got a crack down the middle of it. So if you're Columbia came with a case, especially a hard case, I recommend keeping it in there and then keeping it in a really moderate room. Something without changing temperatures and something without huge humidity changes to, we'll put it like this. Columbus don't like change. So if you've got an environment for it that doesn't change all too often. That's perfect. 17. Final Project: Now, as a final project to this introduction to the Columbia, we're going to take the knowledge that we have now and we're going to put it into practice. We're going to go out and we're going to find a song We Love. We're going to look up Colombia tabs after the title. If you can find tabs for that song, play them and record yourself playing it. Or if you're feeling adventurous, you can also write your own song and record yourself playing that. You can upload it as either an audio or a video file or if you're a little bit recording shy. You can also make mention of the song you chose or tell us the notes in the song that you wrote. And then how it went. There is anything you found really easy or anything that you had trouble with. I'm really looking forward to hearing your project. 18. Congratulations!: Congratulations, You made it to the end of this course. By now, you should have a really good understanding of the basics of the Columbia, but don't stop there. There's always more on your instrument to learn. Other courses and new songs. Always be progressing. If you have any questions or comments you can reach out to me at Jacob at lamb lessons.com. I love hearing from students and learners. Or you can visit me directly at lamb lessons.com. And I'll see you there.