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CHAPTER 1

Beginning Notes

From Ann Sayre Wiseman

Whenever I hear that music, art, and creativity are being cut from the school budget, that learning by doing is being eliminated from the curriculum, I write books to show that creativity is the best and most long-lasting way to learn about life, facts, truths, how things are made, and how things work.

Creativity does not require a special budget or special teachers; it requires imagination, common sense, and resourcefulness. Time to explore should be a basic part of all teaching and learning. When the hands can make something that works, the body is delighted, the mind is validated, and immediately you become a teacher yourself who can pass the skill on to someone else who wants to learn.

Making musical instruments is an important part of creative thinking, and nature has given us amazing sounds to work with. You can find rhythm and sound everywhere: the wind blowing through trees and whistling over holes, thunder in the sky, waves on the sand, rivers rushing by, rain drumming the roof. Singing, humming, slapping, clapping, tapping — wonderful sounds, a scale of notes, free of charge.

We have made instruments that copy these natural sounds. A gourd strung with a sinew or vine makes a crying sound. Anything can be used as a drum. Blowing through reeds makes different notes. When I was working at the Boston Children's Museum I took a group of kids to the dump with a wooden spoon in each hand to collect good sounds. Car parts were the best. We then went to our kitchens and tapped pots, pans, everything we could hang from strings. We blew into pipes and reeds. We collected sounds for our DAM GOOD DUMP BAND and you can too. Hang your sounds from a fence, a shelf, a rack, or the branches of a tree. Invite your friends to come and make music, compose a symphony, write a score.

John Langstaff will show you how to make music and rhythm, how to syncopate, how to work together in a group and make an orchestra, how to conduct, and how to write a score. John has been teaching for years and has written many books of songs and musical games. Here are his suggestions for making music with these instruments.

From John Langstaff

The little girl stood thinking, motion-less, in the middle of the room, facing a semicircle of children holding improvised instruments, and contemplated how she might begin the music.

Looking over her attentive "orchestra," she slowly raised her arm and suddenly pointed to one player. The whirring, metallic sound of an eggbeater began quietly, growing slightly in volume as the conductor's other hand beckoned pitched notes plucked at random from a kalimba — dozens of little notes shimmering over the low drone. Eventually she introduced a different texture, seeds in a large gourd shaken to a furious crescendo. Next she coolly pointed to a child clasping two large pot lids, which he clashed together as primitive cymbals. Now the young conductor fervently waved her arms, urging the players on and indicating the entrance of the remaining musicians.

At this point there was a density of sound in which I could hear a xylophone, notes of a recorder, and the pattern of a single drum making a continuous sound underneath it all. As the cacophony rose to a climax, the conductor held up one hand to signal the clanging, dominating pot lids to cease. Suddenly she held both hands above her head, focusing her players, and then her arms shot down, outstretched, to cut off the music abruptly.

The silence was stunning — but only for a moment. To my surprise, the young conductor-composer's hand flew out to cue in again the original first instruments. I heard the low growling drone of the eggbeater joined by the sparkling notes of the kalimba, just the two quiet instruments continuing on and on ... until she wiped them out with a pass of her hand to end the piece.

I was fascinated. Her music had ended as it had started. Here was a very young "composer" fashioning a score right on the spot, as she conducted her orchestra of homemade instruments for the first time — dealing with the same problems Beethoven had. How to begin? Where to go and how to get there? How to end?

This is the essence of making music together, and it can be experienced using homemade instruments, as described in this book. Children have a natural affinity to rhythm, and this book offers ways to get them immediately involved. As they become more and more engaged in improvising with their instruments, they learn about basic musical elements such as tempo, dynamics, phrasing, and polyrhythms. As they create their own compositions, they naturally learn how to shape them. Presented effectively, this music making is like a fascinating game to children — and to adults as well. Entire families can have musical fun together. Let's begin!

Kitchen Things That Ring

Look around the kitchen, hang utensils from a string, tap them with a pencil or a fork to see if they ring.

Make a gong by hanging a metal tray or a resonant garbage can lid. Strike it with a soft mallet.

Rest a fork on the plastic lid of an empty coffee can — ping the prongs with your fingernails to hear the fork sing.

Scrapers & Rasps

Look around the kitchen

Strum a metal pancake flipper.

Scrape a cheese grater with a stick or a pencil.

The Guiro

from Latin America

Notch a twig and scrape it with a stick.

Use a box, a bowl, or a pot for a sounding board.

Or bend a wire to strum with.

Names & Notation

Say your name all in one beat.

Have the group repeat it.

Go around the circle with the group echoing each name.

Then repeat your own name on one beat, over and over, adding names around the circle.

Keep it going. Add clapping.

Listen as the rhythms pile up.

Now try it with percussion instruments.

Listen to the different patterns.

These are called "polyrhythms."

Fruit Salad

Four players each choose a different fruit. Say the name of the fruit in one beat. Then play that rhythm on your instrument.

This is a composition. All four players start together on the count of 1 and read across their line, saying or playing the fruit name, means a beat of silence.

Crying Water Bowls & Cooking Pots

Stainless-steel bowls with ½ cup of water swirling around when struck on the bottom make strange sounds.

American composer Harry Partch built an array of glass bowls, called "cloud chamber bowls," and wrote several pieces for them.

Pots and pans ring and sing when struck.

Swirling water distorts the notes and carries the sound.

Swish the water and tap the bottom

John remembers English children striking a cymbal and lowering it into a bucket of water, producing a fantastic sound.

Pot Cover Cymbals

Clash, Ring, and Ping

Tap outside edge with pencil.

Find the best tones.

small lids = high tones

large lids = low tones

Unscrew knobs from covers.

Thread string through holes.

Use knots or buttons to keep lids from slipping.

Tap with fingernails or Thimble Fingers.

American composer Kenneth Frazelle wrote a piece for pots and pans called "Shivaree."

Clock Music

Opus 1: A Little Piece for 2 Pot Covers

You will use two pot covers, a fork, the clock score, and a real clock with a second hand.

Here is a clock score for solo player or several on a part.

The second hand of a real clock will be your conductor.

Study the list of sounds at right.

Find on the clock score when each sound is to be played.

Then grasp one pot cover by its knob.

Start at 12 and tap it lightly with a fork for 5 seconds as shown.

Continue around, waiting for the cue for each sound.

You will end back at 12 with a big bang!

A crescendo, indicated by

is when you start softly and grow louder.

A diminuendo, indicated by

is the opposite: you start loud and grow soft.

Bells • Chimes • Triangles

Stemmed wineglasses, rubbed with a wet finger around the lip edge, sing.

Water glasses filled to diminishing levels, tapped with a spoon, give different tones.

Clay flower pots hung from a rod (try different sizes) can be struck gently with a stick. (A cracked pot won't ring.)

Bells sewn on a ribbon can be worn on legs and arms.

A fork or nail will ping; a bent steel bar, suspended, can make the sound of a triangle.

Take an unpainted metal coat hanger and a yard-long piece of string. Wind the middle of the string around the hanger hook. Wrap the ends of the strings around your index fingers and then stick your fingers in your ears. Lean forward so the hanger swings freely enough to strike an object — chair, table, etc. You will privately hear the most amazing sound of big tolling bells. You can attach more strings to the coat hanger so that several people can hear the bells at the same time!

Glass Harmonica

You can make clear pitches from thin-rimmed glasses of water filled to different levels.

Wet one of your fingers.

Rub it around the glass rim.

Try playing a song.

Benjamin Franklin loved this sound and built an instrument to make it easier to play. He called it the "Glass Armonica." He composed his own pieces for it and traveled through Europe playing it.

Foot pedals rotated a series of glass bowls of graduated sizes set in a trough of water. When a finger touched the moist, spinning bowl, it produced a clear musical tone.

Mozart liked the sound of the glass harmonica so much that he wrote several compositions for it, and Beethoven wrote one, too.

Tambourine

Head

To make a tambourine head, stretch thin hide, rubber inner tubing, canvas, or fabric over a hoop. (After fabric is stretched over hoop, saturate it with diluted white glue to give head a better tone and tightness.)

Hoops

Hoops can be made of cardboard, heavy belt leather, or flexible plastic.

Try embroidery hoops. (Stretch hide or chamois skin over the smaller hoop and secure with the larger hoop.)

Thread clappers or tie them on.

Clappers

Clappers can be made out of seashells, screw eyes, buttons, washers, coins with holes, or bottle caps flattened with a hammer.

Drill or poke holes in the hoop.

Thread clappers or tie them on.

In each of the caps tap a big loose hole.

Thread them on a wire or a paper clip.

Maracas: Rattle & Clatter

Use any empty container: plastic, wood, paper, glass, or cardboard, filled with stones, rice, beans, peas, or sand; or a natural gourd, filled with its own dry seeds.

Make two: shake one in each hand.

Fill a plastic lemon with seeds and slide it on a chopstick.

Seeds inside a gourd will rattle when dry.

Scallop or clam shells can be clamped together. Split a dowel tip to hold the shells. Put tiny pebbles in the shells. Attach with a strong elastic, string, or shoelace.

Fill a small or large milk carton with pebbles.

To make a balloon shaker, insert four or five paper clips before you blow the balloon up.

Two paper soup bowls or aluminum pie pans, glued together with pebbles inside, rattle.

Rainstick

Sew wire through a cardboard or plastic tube to make a maze for rice, dried peas, or sand to run through. (Instead of wire, poke nails all the way into tube.)

Thimble Fingers & Tapping Gloves

Buy 10 thimbles that fit tight.

Metal or plastic is all right.

Tap on wood, tap on stone,

tap on metal, tap on bone.

Every surface has a sound.

Acorns cost nothing.

Try acorn "hats" on your fingers.

Strum an old washboard.

Sew buttons on your old gloves, or glue on thimbles.

Claves & Rhythm Sticks

The lower clave must rest on your fist, so the cradle of your fingers and thumb can act as a sounding box. (Holding the dowel in your fist will "deaden" the sound.)

Use 1"-diameter hardwood dowels, 4"or 5" long.

Sand Blocks

Tack sandpaper on wooden blocks.

Tack on tape or ribbon as hand-holds.

Scratch the blocks back and forth to play.

Jingling Johnny

Shake your stick or tap it on the ground.

Use a thick broomstick and lots of thin nails with heads.

Hammer bottle caps flat.

Make big nail holes in bottle caps so caps will clap and slide on nail easily.

Slip two or more caps on each nail, then hammer nail part way into broomstick.

Leave a section free of nails for the handhold.

Glue a rubber chair coaster or crutch cap onto one end so you can tap your stick on the ground.

Castanets & Clappers

Spoons, wood or metal, clapped together, make a good hollow sound.

Bottle caps attached to thumb and finger make good castanets.

To make walnut castanets, tape cloth or cardboard finger loops onto empty shells.

Use only good shells — a crack will spoil the tone.

Or try acorns on your fingers.

Button Castanets

Buttons, glued onto a strip of cardboard, make a tiny clicking sound.

In parts of Spain, women take shells from the beach to use as castanets and then dance to them. You can also scrape the backs of two scallop shells together.

Tongue Drums

An adult should help with this project.

Every wood has its own sound.

Tap a few boards and listen.

Try spruce, fruit, and redwood for the best sounds.

At least make the top out of sonorous wood — the rest can be pine.

There is no magic to these measurements — use what you have on hand.

A small box will sound higher; a large box will sound deeper and richer.

Cut top C out of a hardwood (like redwood) 26" x 8".

Cut two sections of piece B, 6" x 8" (ends).

Cut two sections of piece A, 6" x 26" (sides).

Cut bottom from anything, 8" x 26".

Top: Drill starting holes and then insert the coping saw blade to make the slits.

Cut six tongues into the top (see below), each a different length and width.

For mallets see here.

Huzix

Make a square box any size: 6" x 6" or 8" x 8" or 10" x 10".

Leave one side open.

Cut one letter on each side. Try H, U, Z, I, X: each letter makes a different sound.

Use sonorous wood for all sides.

Drum Improvisations

Drums can both whisper and command. John Cage, an American composer, wrote a piece for three drums played very softly with the fingertips. You have to listen very carefully to hear it well!

Try making up your own piece that sounds mysterious and quiet, then suddenly grows funny and playful, then gradually returns to that mysterious feeling.

Fabric covered with white glue to size it makes a good drumhead — so do rubber bed sheets and inner tubing.

A coffee can with a plastic lid on one end or both makes a quick drum.

A coconut or gourd can have plastic, cloth, leather, or chamois stretched over tightly and tied.

To make sound pockets on a steel oil drum first heat the steel, then hammer it.

Stretch canvas or plastic over a tin can or wooden bowl.

Tape it tight or tie with string or elastic.

Use a cardboard ice cream barrel.

Stretch fabric across the top and attach it with a strong rubber band.

Empty plastic gallon milk jugs turned upside down make great drums.

For a two-headed drum, remove the top and bottom from the largest tin can you can find.

Stretch cloth, rubber, leather, or chamois over the openings.

Stitch around each head.

Lash the stitches top to bottom.

Even a waste basket or garbage pail with stretched canvas will work.

Mallets

A mallet has a head; a drumstick does not.

Thread spool on a stick

Section of coat hanger shoved into cork

Pencil with eraser as the beater

Dowel shoved into old tennis ball, perfect for striking a gong

Dowel or chopstick with rubber bands or strips of inner tubing

Pencil with metal nut for striking metal

Chair spool with padded cloth or leather head for hitting a gong

Playing The Room

With two drumsticks in hand, explore the room, gently striking the floor, the walls, the blinds, the stairs.

Tap the chair, the desk, metal cabinets, doorknobs, bottles, wastebaskets.

Listen to your friend's sounds.

Converse with them, varying loud and soft, fast and slow.

Imitate and improvise.

Listen — always listen as you play.

Record your percussion piece to hear later.

Don't harm or break anything ... of course!

Percussion Conversations

Use instruments instead of words to talk back and forth with a friend.

Just like speech, you can be loud or quiet, slow or fast, high or low, funny or angry. Always listen to your partner as you improvise and respond.

Silence is a vital part of music. John Cage wrote a piece for piano, entitled 4'33", which is exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence — that's all! It has been performed many times all over the world.

Copy-Cat Rhythms

Someone plays a rhythm pattern.

Others copy — take turns — follow the leader — loud and soft, fast and slow.

Include silence among your sounds.

Listen.

Canons & Rounds

Try playing the rhythm of a well-known canon, or round, such as "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," "Frêre Jacques," or "Three Blind Mice."

(You can sing it first, but then play or clap just the rhythm of the words.) Perform it as a canon with a couple of other players.

The first player begins. The second player enters when the first starts the second line.

The third player enters as the second player starts the second line.

Play all three rounds together, starting at the same moment.

Or tap one round on your instrument, and have other players guess which one it is.

Some composers write little canons for fun, as messages or puzzles to send to friends. Some can be played or sung forward, backward, and upside-down. Haydn even wrote "mirror" canons to be read with a mirror!

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Making Music"
by .
Copyright © 2003 Ann Sayre Wiseman.
Excerpted by permission of Storey Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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