Learn Mary Had a Little Lamb on the Kalimba
A thumb piano: seventeen steel tines on a hollow wooden board. Tap a tine or sweep across them, and read songs in real kalimba number tabs.
—last tine
The lowest note is in the middle; the scale climbs outward — left, right, left.Keys 1–7, Q–U, A S DTurn your phone sideways for wider tines.
Pick a song to practise, or just pluck the tines. Songs with sharps or flats need a chromatic kalimba.
Choose a songPick a song
—
Songs
Settings
100 BPM
Tine labels
ringingplay this nextDots mark higher octaves
Space listen or stop · Esc stop
How to play Mary Had a Little Lamb on the kalimba
Four neighbouring notes and one leap — a classroom favourite to learn first. American nursery rhyme, 1830.
- Key
- C major
- Time
- 4/4
- Tempo
- 100 BPM
- Notes
- 26
- Level
- Easy
- Listen. Press Listen above to hear it at 100 BPM. You can slow it down in Settings.
- Play along. Press Play along and the tine to pluck lights up. Play it and the next one lights. A wrong note is named, so you know what to change.
- Play it from the notes. Once it feels familiar, play it from the sheet below without the lights.
Tabs number the notes of the scale: 1 is C, 2 is D, up to 7 for B. A dot above a number means the octave above. The lowest tine is in the middle and notes alternate left and right.
The notes
Written as kalimba number tabs, with letter names underneath. A dot (·) is a rest.
- 3E4Ma-2D4ry1C4had2D4a3E4lit-3E4tle3E4lamb,2D4lit-2D4tle2D4lamb,3E4lit-5G4tle5G4lamb,
- 3E4Ma-2D4ry1C4had2D4a3E4lit-3E4tle3E4lamb,3E4its2D4fleece2D4was3E4white2D4as1C4snow.