Composing Activities

Composing is a bit like the ‘crème de la crème’ of musical activity as it can incorporate all aspects of musical learning – as students compose, they’ll be listening carefully to what they are playing and making judgements about it (hopefully). Composing activities with Boomwhackers® allow students to experience the creative process, as they try their ideas out, experiment and don’t always have to get things ‘right’!

Pentatonic Melodies

Number of participants: 3

Tubes needed: Three notes from a pentatonic scale. One tube each.

Resources needed: Selection of rhythm sentences that the students can read

  1. In groups of three, students have one Boomwhacker® each from the pentatonic scale, for example, CDE or CGA and a simple rhythm sentence – initially, just containing crotchets. 

  2. They decide what order the pitches will go in the rhythm sentence and play it as a group, each taking a part in playing the melody. For example:

  • As students become more proficient, the group size, length and difficulty of the rhythm sentence and the number of pitches can be increased, e.g. in groups of five, participants can be given all the notes of the pentatonic scale to create a melody.

  • Encourage them to experiment with using different playing techniques for each colour tube. Does that make the melody more interesting or is it overly fussy?

 

Extend

  • Use chords to create an accompaniment. These are made up of the same notes as chosen above from the pentatonic scale, perhaps played as a riff, or a drone that uses just two of those notes.

  • Add a rhythmic accompaniment on drums or other non-tuned percussion.

  • The same pentatonic scale can also be used to create a simple bass line to accompany the melody.