News

January 27, 2023

Our New Livestream Series on YouTube & Facebook Live!

We're Launching a New Livestream Series for 2023 with our friend Kalani Das of YouTube's WORLD DRUM CLUB

Watch this short video below recorded from a recent livestream Kalani gave on his World Drum Club YouTube channel playing our instruments while utilizing a live looper. On Sunday, January 29th, Kalani will be joined by We Play Well Together's Joule L'Adara to talk about how the instruments are played in this video, offer more live demonstrations and interact through a Q&A format. Come with any questions you have about playing intuitive instruments and we'll be ready to answer!

Kalani has been a long time friend and collaborator of We Play Well Together, so we've decided to join forces this year and offer a monthly Livestream where we can offer special interaction opportunities with our audience and customers. Look out for this on the last Sunday of the month on our YouTube Channel and Facebook Page.

Our First collaborative Livestream with Kalani is:

Sunday, January 29th

1pm PT/ 2pm MT/ 3pm CT/ 4pm ET

Watch on YouTube Live

Watch on Facebook Live

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January 17, 2023

ASMR Monolina Journey Morning Meditation

Morning! 🌞

And now for a little Monolina Meditation...

Take an 11-minute ASMR Journey with Chelsea Caroline and her Monolina D in 432 Hz.

Though beautifully simple for anyone to play, the monochord is surprisingly diverse in all the different creative ways people play it! While this dreamy drone can be mesmerizing when played in a repetitive fashion, the monochord can also be played with hypnotic rhythms while brining in and out the melody accent notes, as you'll experience in the video below...

Our monochords are the 34-sring Monolina and 21-string Monilini made by feeltone and they come in 5 different tunings which all offer their own rich tapestry of harmonics.

Watch and listen to this lovely 11-minute video created by Sound Artist Chelsea Caroline, who gives you information about the Monolina Monochord made by feeltone, then treats us to rhythmic playing on her Monolina D. (Or you may want to hit play, close your eyes and just listen!)

Follow Chelsea Caroline Music on her YouTube Channel

Time to wake up! 🌞

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December 17, 2022

Robbi K on WE PLAY WELL TOGETHER Instruments & The Spirit of Kwanzaa

WE PLAY WELL TOGETHER presents an online participatory celebration with Musical Artist Robbi Kumalo

Our friend Robbi K offered a live Zoom Kwanzaa Celebration in which she shared how she uses her instrument collection in connection with Kwanzaa: an annual celebration of African-American culture from December 26th to January 1st. This video features highlights of her presentation featuring the WE PLAY WELL TOGETHER family of instruments. Featured in this video are: the Zenko Drum by Metal Sounds (in Combo Tuning), a feeltone Monolini Monochord (in F Tuning), and a Hokema Kalimba (Renaissance in A-minor.)

Robbi Kumalo is a musician whose career spans decades and was recently featured on the Grammy-nominated Album "All One Tribe."

For more than 25 years, Robbi K's concerts have been joyous and exhilarating, with a focus on amusing and edifying the entire family, from parents to grandparents, toddlers to teens. Everybody participates with voices, hands, feet and hearts. Robbi K’s powerful lyric soprano has graced TV commercials for the likes of Coca Cola, Lincoln Mercury,and GE, while onstage and in studios it has served her well in establishing an active career as a back-up singer for such superstars as Chaka Khan, Aretha Franklin, Jewel, Diana Ross, Rod Stewart, Daniel Rodriquez, Mary J. Blige, and Harry Belafonte.

Robbi K presents a variety of lively, interactive musical and storytelling concerts including "Keep the Beat,” which has been performed most recently at NYC’s Symphony Space, The Philadelphia International Children's Festival; The Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall in Sarasota, Florida; The State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey; and The Berks Jazz Festival. Robbi’s most requested show, which plays in venues nationwide, is inspired by Paul Simon's Grammy winning Graceland. As a storyteller, “Turtle’s Shell,” derived from her Parents' Choice Award winning CD Keep the Beat! she incorporates music and spoken word in an outstanding and unique manner.

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December 6, 2022

Gift to Support The Women's Earth and Climate Action Network

Each holiday season, we invite you to consider a gift that gives back.

The Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International and We Play Well Together are honored to partner with the Kichwa women of Sarayaku in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador.

We're deeply honored to be supporting this group by importing and selling their beautiful beaded jewelry on our website. We Play Well Together has donated funds to purchase the first round of artwork from the Sarayaku Women in addition to donating website and logistical support to send them to you. All profits from your purchases will directly support the livelihood of the craftswomen, and their advocacy work to protect the forest through Amazon Women Defenders of the Jungle (Mujeres Amazonicas Defensoras).

Holiday Shop While Making a Difference...

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November 24, 2022

The profound experience of Soundscape-Jamming

Struggling to find harmony with family and friends this Holiday Season? We can help you PLAY WELL TOGETHER...

For many of us, the holidays season can be stressful. Finding topics of conversation with friends and family you have to spend time with when people struggle with conflicting beliefs can be next to impossible. But making making music together can offer us a profound way of interacting with one another that goes beyond ideas and brings us instantly into shared resonance.

We've experienced many touching stories from our community about how coming together to play Intuitive music has been the one way people who hold opposite belief systems can find harmony, understanding and listening to one-another. It can be an incredibly healing way to find our way back to simple joy and unconditional positive regard - even with people who disagree on everything else. (And a deeply bonding experience with friends and loved ones.)

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We take this opportunity to introduce to you our very first series of Soundscape Jam Sets: groups of instruments that are tuned together where anyone (regardless of musical ability) can instantly jam together! In a Soundscape Jam, you don't even need to have the ability to play accurate rhythms: because all the instruments are tuned together and create layers of sound that create an atmosphere, a vibe...

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November 13, 2022

Our newest Kalimba: The B17 "Mini" by Hokema

Just in time for the 2022 holiday season, we introduce the new B17 "Mini" Kalimba by Hokema Kalimbas. This new model was specially designed with smaller hands in mind! The B17-Mini is more easily playable for children, young adults, and anyone with a smaller-sized hand.

Another fun bonus of the B-17 Mini is that the metal tines are mounted more closely together. This makes it easier to play glissandos: a musical term which means "a continuous slide upward or downward between two or more notes". You can take your thumbs and run them in a sweeping motion up or down, producing with ease this delightful sound effect where the notes blend seamlessly into each other.

This new B17-Mini Kalimba has the exact same musical layout and tuning of the larger B17 Kalimba (original): made from a beautiful block of American Cherry wood upon which metal tines fan out to form two-and-a-half octaves of the *C-Major diatonic scale. This kalimba starts with the bottom root note in the middle then alternates back and forth between the left and right sides played by the thumbs building up the scale from the inside opening out to the sides of the instrument. Because of this special layout, chord triads are located adjacent to each other, making different chords easy to see and therefore song accompaniment easily learnable and playable. It also comes with little "chord magnets" that allow you to mark the chords you want to play! Watch this 2-minute video to hear the sweet glissandos and see how the chord magnets function...

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October 18, 2022

Introducing the Zenko ELEMENTALS: Earth / Air / Fire / Water in 432 Hz

Heard of Koshi Chimes?

(Or maybe you have one!)

These popular hanging chimes in 432 Hz from France have become "sound mediation" essential tools in recent years. We were then of course thrilled when The Metal Sounds Company decided to create a set of Zenko drum "Elementals" in corresponding tunings to match the Koshis. We knew the sound-healing folks would love these small, lightweight, beautifully sweet bell-like melodic drums that could be incorporated so seamlessly into a sound-bath setup.

At half the size (and half the price-point) of the larger Zenko Tongue-Drums, our community has nicknamed these the "baby turtles" and shown them lots of love so far. (And while they're tuned in 432 Hz to match the Koshis, we will have versions in 440 hz available as well soon.)

💓🐢

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September 14, 2022

Why were 118K Souls Soothed by this B15 Kalimba video?!

New Instrument Alert!

The B15 Kalimba by Hokema

We put an upright version of this video on our new @Hokema.us account on Instagram, and were astounded when it reached 118K views in 24 hours. When we asked folks what they liked about it, many replied the combination of the lower tones together with the visual of watching the tines "wiggle" brought about an incredibly soothing effect. So we also made this 2-minute YouTube version and hope it brings you a moment of joy or repose today. While listening to the video is sweet (shot in the Mountains near Taos, New Mexico), we can tell you the effects of holding one of these kalimbas in your hands and playing it for yourself truly gets the serotonin flowing...

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Introducing the new B15 Kalimba by Hokema Kalimbas. At first glance, the B15 appears similar to its sister instrument the B17: made from a beautiful block of American Cherry wood upon which metal tines fan out to be played by the thumbs. But look closer: you'll see on this instrument there are two rows of tines with the ones on the bottom being thicker, producing soothing lower tones. When combined with the higher notes emanating from the tines on the row above, pleasing chord combination can easily be created on this kalimba by an intuitive player - simply by creatively combining the higher and lower rows.

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August 30, 2022

Brother & Sister Spacedrum Duet in the Rocky Mountains

We bring this sweet little 4-minute video featuring a Spacedrum handpan duet played next to Mary's Lake in Estes Park, Colorado, by a brother-and-sister duo:

Now here's the BIG question: Can you make beautiful music on a handpan as a beginner? We say YES as this video features Joule L'Adara on Spacedrum Evolution (Atlantic'o Tuning) who'd been playing the handpan just a few months along with her brother Mike Moss on Spacedrum Nitro (Sonoro Tuning) who'd only played the handpan for two days before this recording! Granted, Mike's a trained percussionist and many of the drumming skills translate, but Joule's not a drummer at all. Yet by creating a simple pulse in a 5-count that's repeated with a few variations and combining it with accent notes, they were able to bring you this meditative handpan duet after jamming only a couple of days together.

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Anyone can learn simple patterns on the handpan (even in "odd time!") and create lovely sounds- which can be a wonderful bonding experience for family or friends. Mike & Joule ended up with an audience: a family of hikers with small children who sat quietly enraptured throughout the playing. The parents couldn't believe their small children sat so still listening! We told them these sounds are very soothing to the nervous system and hyper kids are naturally calmed by these instruments. Here's the "audience" behind the video:

Note: We usually have a few Spacedrums in stock in California that can be delivered immediately within the US - BUT! They sell out quickly and if you'd to choose your particular tuning the wait time can be up to 12 weeks, so be sure to place your orders early. (And remember - we have payment plans to help make that handpan wish come true :)

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