Found Instruments: Ice, Garbage Cans, Sports Equipment, Vegetables, Cars...and more!

Not all instruments have a place in the band or orchestra. Some of them are called found instruments, which basically means that if you can pick something up and make a sound on it...congratulations, you've found an instrument!

Not all found instruments fit nicely into the woodwind/brass/string/percussion categories, but they fit into even broader instrument categories. These categories are the following:

• Idiophone (produces sound through vibration, like claves, guiro, xylophone, maracas, etc.)
• Membranophone (produces sound by vibrating a stretched membrane, like that of a drum head; examples include drums and kazoos)
• Chordophone (produces sound by vibrating one or more strings; includes piano, violin, banjo, etc.)
• Aerophone (produces sound using a vibrating column of air, like flute, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, whip, slide whistle, etc.)
• Electrophone (produces sound electronically, like the clavinova (the piano in the classroom) or theremin) 

Now for the cool part: seeing found instruments in action!

Ice of Lake Baikal in Siberia (a super-cold, very large part of Russia)

Stomp!

Basketballs and shoes

Vegetables

All sorts of things...not necessarily all "found," but quite complex (link to the creative process for the music video and all the planning that went into it - super neat!)

Household objects
Please note that this is a Swedish comedy film with trained actors. Do not treat your electrical appliances like this. Do not use other people's toothbrushes. Do not spray all of the hairspray and perfume you can get your hands on at once. Be safe. This has been a public service announcement from the music room.

Created from garbage in a landfill

This video is especially neat because not all areas of the world have the money for music education, and this is one way that a town in Paraguay has devised to combat this issue.

If you want to earn a DRUM card, watch at least 2 of these videos and tell me what you thought about them in at least 3-5 sentences using proper spelling and grammar (as well as proper punctuation and capitalization!).

Kaleidoscope Concert

Congratulations to the 5th graders who performed in the Kaleidoscope concert tonight! Everyone did a fantastic job, and you made us all proud.

"Music Alone Shall Live" (music starts at 0:52)

"An American Celebration" (music starts at 2:00)

I got pretty excited when I heard that the high school percussionists were going to do a small feature using rhythms from Riverdance. Fun fact: I, Ms. Galligan, was an Irish dancer for 6 years throughout middle school and high school.

Here's the dance where they got the rhythm:

Another fun fact: Michael Flatley (the solo dancer in the video) toured with Riverdance for a short time before creating his own show, Lord of the Dance. His legs are insured for $40,000,000. Yes, that is the right number of zeros. By the way, he also plays the flute!

Rhythm Review...with Legos!

Today we worked on reviewing rhythms in 4/4 time with grades 3, 4, and 5. There are so many neat resources out there for SMART Boards, including these Lego rhythms! Each bump on top represents one beat, so it's a great tool for visual learners. We also verbally reviewed for auditory learning, and tapped each student-written rhythm out using rhythm sticks (while speaking the rhythms) for kinesthetic learning.

These were some of the rhythms students created:
(from top to bottom, 5C, 5NW, 4G, 4W, 3K, and 3B)