Homemade Instruments!

First of all, I'm going to share some great ideas for making instruments submitted by other music educators. Later in the article, you will find the usual links list for finding more fun things to do offered on the internet. Hopefully, this article will spur some creative and fun activities in your classroom and if so, let us know about them. I'll post them at my personal music site.

These ideas are from Kristen

In the book, "Kids Make Music!" by Avery Hart and Paul Mantell, there are many great ideas. Here are just a few:

Tissue Box Lute:

"These instruments are simple to create and play, but more importantly, they make a really great sound. The secret is using different sizes of rubber bands, thick and thin, for the strings."

"Stretch rubber bands around the [tissue] box, the short way, and pluck."

Paper bag maracas:

"Start by decorating paper bags [like a brown/white lunch bag] .... Fill them with dried beans and tie with yarn."

The Boom-bah: [according to the book, this is an actual instrument played every friday night at the "Leather Corner Post Hotel and Restaurant in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania."]

"Boom-bahs are like people; each and every one is a unique creation, never to be duplicated. An old pogo stick is the ideal spine for this unique instrument, but a broom stick with an auto spring and rubber foot (the kind you find on stool legs) on the does fine, too. (If you don't have a rubber foot, play the boom-bah inside a carton or glue felt to the bottom, and it won't make marks on the floor." Once you've go the spine painted and gussied up, and ready for booming, it's time to add the bahs - jingling keys, bells, bottle caps - any noise maker you can think of. Attach them with the strong, round staples used to hold telephone wires, or nail things loosely on the stick." [the book shows a picture and it looks like they used rubber bands to connect some pot lids together. Then they wrapped the rubberbands around the stick. They used safety pins to attatch jingle bells to a stabilized ring on the stick. They also used Baby rattles, keys and pie plates.]

"Playing the boom-bah Playing the boom-bah isn't very hard - but it is a lot of fun! All you do is thump it on the floor, while singing your heart out to the beat."

"At the Leather Corner Post Hotel and Restaurant, boom-bahhers stomp along to songs on the juke box, to every style of song, from polka to