"Whacky" Music

"Whacky" Music

In this activity, the students "whack" tubes of different lengths to produce various pitches.

Introduction

Music can be defined as:

1. The art of producing significant arrangements of sounds, usually with reference to rhythm, pitch and tone.
2. A succession or combination of notes, especially if pleasing to the ear.

This may or may not happen with a Boomwhacker orchestra, but students will certainly unveil the relationship between pitch and instrument length.

Boomwhackers Tuned Percussion Tubes are lightweight, hollow, color-coded, plastic tubes, tuned to musical pitches by length. Boomwhackers produce musical tones when struck together, on the floor, or against nearly any surface. They have a "sweet spot" that is a few inches from the end of the tube that gives the best tone.

When you whack a Boomwhacker, you set it (and the air inside it) vibrating at its resonant frequency. A larger Boomwhacker vibrates at a lower frequency and produces a lower pitch.

Boomwhackers have a very simple structure for a musical instrument. Other percussion instruments can easily be made at home e.g. coffee can drums, bottle cap clinkers, etc.

Objectives