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- Noisy learning: loud but fun
- Sound and instruments
- Percussion fast and cheap
Containers for shakers or maracas - to turn your shaker into a maraca, make a hole in the container, put a stick, pencil, or short length of 1/2" dowel into the hole, and tape it together.
- Paper bag or plastic bag
- Plastic Easter egg
- Empty plastic tubs with lids
- Dried gourd - very authentic and easy to grow in many places
- Hollow balls, for example tennis balls and plastic "softballs" - you'll have to make a hole in them to fill them; so you might as well make maracas
- Some seed pods come already filled with dried seeds and make great shakers
- Make your own with papier-mache.
Cymbals, gongs, bells and triangles - the trick to getting a good sound out of these instruments is to let them vibrate freely. don't touch the part that is supposed to "ring" with your fingers or anything soft. hold it by a handle, hang it from a piece of string (make a hole in the object, or tape the string to it), or set it on a hard surface.
- Metal bowls that are a single curved surface (with no extra rim on the bottom to steady them) make great gongs. Set them on a hard surface. For a really cool effect, try swirling a very small amount of water in the bowl and strike it while the water is still swirling.
- A metal clothes hanger
- Trash can lids or pot lids
- Metal pie plate
- Hung flowerpots (use a soft beater)
- The chimes from a windchime
- Hammer large nails to different depths in a piece of lumber. Use another large nail as a beater to strike the nails in the wood.
- For home-made wood blocks or marimba, rest hardwood boards or pieces of bamboo of different lengths across two other pieces of lumber.
- String jingle bells or bottle caps on yarn, ribbon, or string to make hand, ankle, or wrist jingles.
Guiros and washboards - these instruments are played by scraping a hard stick or beater across the corrugations.
- Heavy corrugated cardboard
- Wrap and glue heavy string around a short piece of 1" dowel.
- Cheese grater
- Saw, file, whittle, or cut notches into a piece of dowel or 1X1 lumber, or a thick stick. Notch spacing should be on the order of 1/8"-1/4".
- Sandpaper
Sticks and clicks
- Stamping stick - A large, thick stick can be played by "stamping" it on the floor or in a bucket or basin.
- Claves - Cut two short lengths of dowel, lumber, or sticks (about 1" diameter, and about 6" long) to beat against each other. Smooth, hard wood gives the best sound. Make the sound more resonant by holding one clave cupped lightly in one hand while hitting it with the other.
- Play thick pieces of bamboo as you would claves, or hang them and play them like gongs.
- Pencils and wooden spoons can also be played like claves, but the sound will be much softer.
- Finger Castanets - tie one button onto the thumb, and another onto the middle finger. Or use the halves of a walnut shell or small metal jar lids
- Hand Castanets - loosely hold two spoons close together, back-to-back, in one hand, and swing them against the other hand to make them click.
- Shake keys on a key ring, or click them against the palm of the hand.
Not percussion
- The easiest way to get a "string" sound is to stretch rubber bands between fingers, nails, or thumbtacks, or around tubs or boxes. An old-fashioned wash tub bass, made using a small metal tub, broom handle, and thick string, is fairly easy to construct.
- Blow across the lip of a glass jug or bottle.
- The easiest "wind instrument" to make is a kazoo, which you play by humming into it. Use a square of waxed paper or tissue paper, and either rubber-band it onto one end of a cardboard tube or fold it over the teeth of a small comb.
- You can make a simple "horn" or "trumpet" by taping a tin funnel to the end of a yard or two of garden hose, plastic pool tubing, or any other flexible tubing about 1" in diameter, but getting a sound out of your instrument may require a real mouthpiece and someone who knows how to play a brass instrument.
Source:
OpenStax, Noisy learning: loud but fun music education activities. OpenStax CNX. May 17, 2007 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10222/1.7
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