© 1998-2005, Whacky Music, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

WORKING WITH GROUPS

MINI-CONCLUSION

BOOMWHACKERS® MUSICAL TUBES GLOSSARY

side of your shoe . . . whatever! Different surfaces can produce different sounds ("timbres"), but always

the same musical pitch.

such as a pencil, a stick, a Boomwhacker Whacker™ Mallet, etc. Other household items that work well:

the rounded back of a spoon or fatter end of a butter knife.

technically, a harmonic interval)!

the sound (timbre) changes when you cover it with a towel. Vary the number of layers of the towel.

floor so the entire length of the tube strikes the floor at the same time.

musical pitch.

note, the “tremolo” works best. The basic idea is to move the tube quickly between two surfaces that are

just a few inches apart, striking each with as equal a force as possible. This can be the opposite hand

held a few inches over the thigh, a hand and table top, between the sides of the shoes with feet relatively

close together, etc. Also works great for “rumbles” or “cutting loose.”

These caps lower the tone by an octave when placed on the end of a tube. Play the tubes as usual or

hold them vertically and tap on the floor, etc., as a "stamping" tube.

Placed on the higher octave tubes, the caps create the same tones as the bass octave tubes. Placed on

the bass octave tubes, they go down another octave, making a 3-octave range possible.

It can work nicely for a facilitator to put one on the 2-foot-long Red C tube to get the lower octave sound

in driving the pulse. It’s easier to handle than the bass diatonic C tube, which is over 4 feet long.

The following is some basic information about ways to use the tubes in facilitating group musical and

rhythmic experiences.

Of course, just plain ol' experimenting is how a lot of these ideas developed, so we always

encourage that. When we demo the tubes, some of our favorite things to show people came from

kids who simply had the opportunity to express their own creativity. The suggestions below do

not just address rhythmic ideas, because the tuned nature of the tubes also brings melody and

harmony instantly into reach.

Most group facilitators work with the C Major Pentatonic Scale Set rather than the C Major

Diatonic Scale Set. The diatonic scale is the familiar do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do that is found on the

white keys of the piano, starting on (middle) C. In this scale, as one familiar with music or the

layout of a piano knows, there are two places where there is only a semitone between notes (and

Of course there is also the simple fact that the pentatonic set has 6 tubes, while the diatonic set

has 8, and so there are 2 fewer parts to hand out with the pentatonic set.

The official colors for the tubes, including chromatics (sharps/flats) look like this:

C                         Red                      Red

C# / Db               Red/Orange        Vermilion

D                          Orange               Orange

D# / Eb                Yellow/Orange   Saffron

E                           Yellow                 Yellow

F                           Yellow/Green      Lime

F# / Gb                 Green                 Green

G                           Blue/Green         Teal

G# / Ab                 Blue                     Blue

A                            Blue/Violet          Indigo

A# / Bb                  Violet                  Purple

B                            Red/Violet          Magenta

As can be seen in this chart, the colors “Green” and “Purple” both refer to chromatics notes. As a

practical matter, however, when working with the pentatonic or diatonic sets, the G tube is most

commonly referred to as “green” rather than “teal” and the A tube as “purple” rather than indigo. So we’ll

use those names in the examples below, but put them in quotes as a reminder that there are chromatics

tubes that are really these colors.

This particular technique from the drum circle facilitation world is very effective with Boomwhackers®

tubes. In Whacky Music’s Glossary for the tubes, we would call this Smackin’ or Cuttin’ Loose. Smackin’

is playing the tubes without any rhythmic purpose. The word “rumble” describes very well the sound of a

lot of drums being hit as quickly as possible without paying any attention to a group pulse. You can

“play” a lot with rumbles by bringing volume down and up for the whole group and also by similarly doing

that with alternating subsections of the group (one getting louder while the others remain soft and shifting

it around the group).

The technique applied to the tubes simply has everyone hitting their tube quickly and repeatedly for as

long as you hold the space to rumble. They may hit their other hand or the floor (if sitting on the floor) or

the chair in front of them as long as they don’t whack someone sitting in the chair. The beauty of

rumbling with the tubes is you can easily feature their melodic and harmonic nature. A simple technique

participants take turns doing the call. (A favorite is always "Shave and a hair cut, two bits!” but any

experienced rhythm facilitator can create lots of rhythmic patterns on the fly.) It can be helpful to start

simple and get more complex with the patterns over time. For a variation, have the participants take

turns doing the call. I’ve done this with some kid “helpers” at school assemblies. Sometimes the kid will

“freeze” and not know what to do. So I show them that they can make their call as simple as just one

had to make up a new rule: Don’t do a call for the group that you can’t exactly repeat yourself!

Assign a different ostinato to different notes and build a song. Initiate the pattern for one of the tubes (or

2) until the participants with that note can play it consistently, then add the next note, and so on. There

are easier ways and harder ways to do this, so we’ll discuss them in more detail. The examples are all

4/4 time although an experienced rhythmist can easily apply these techniques to 6/8 as a nice alternative

or even more complex rhythms if the participants are more advanced. Note that all the examples in this

Building a Song section assume that the 1 or 2 illustrated measures will be continuously repeated as long

as desired or until instructions are given to vary the song.

One of the keys to making this “instant music” more interesting is not to get too much going on with all the

tubes, but to keep at least several of the patterns simple enough that there is musical space for the other

patterns to be heard.

A quick and easy way to distribute the ostinatos is to demonstrate the patterns for two notes at a time as

a simple call and response of one note to the other, where the response need not be an exact repetition

of the call. Then move on to the next pair, and perhaps lengthen the phrase of each pair (say 2 beats

instead of 1). Repeat for the third pair with yet a longer phrase (say a full measure of 4 beats).

Examples appear on the next page.

This way one can hold a note in each hand, and the assigned rhythmic patterns are covered in three

steps, instead of 6. This works particularly well for the pentatonic version as all the note combinations

will sound fine, and one needn't be concerned about how the subsequent pair patterns interact with the

previous ones. 

This simple version is the easiest to “hand out” and easiest for the participants to get. However, in our

experience allowing the response part to vary from the call, as in the next example, definitely adds to a

more musical experience for the song.

Example 1B:   Pairs; lengthening conversations; response differs from call

Again, this simple slight modification of the response pattern from the call adds more musical interest.

Next is an example where the calls and responses for the first 2 pair vary from the first measure to the

second.

Example 1C:     Pairs; lengthening conversations; calls and responses for 1st 2 pair may vary by measure

This additional varying of the patterns from measure to measure (for the first 2 pair) will create a little

more interest in the overall “song,” but is also harder to keep straight when passing out the patterns. One

approach would be to do one measure until everyone “gets it,” and then do the same for the next

measure. The final step is to put it all together. In most group rhythmic experiences, however, it simply

isn’t necessary to go to this level of complexity. But if you feel you can keep it straight, then you should

be able to work with the group until they get it and the additional variation in the song may be worth it.

Don’t think too hard about all of this. It comes together pretty quickly, and once you get the general idea,

you can pretty much walk into any situation and “wing it” on the parts with very acceptable results. The

two main aspects are to pick your pairs and then distribute the relatively simple patterns in 3 steps of

lengthening conversations between the pairs. When you get comfortable with that, you can explore

varying the patterns for the first 2 pair from one measure to the next. (The third pair already covers 2

measures in their conversation, so they wouldn’t vary unless you stretched it all out to 4 measures – a

more daunting task!)

This technique will take a little longer to hand out the parts, because they are being given one at a time,

with the recommended exception of the first 2 parts. The idea is to design a pattern for each of the 6

parts that together create an interesting sound, and, if you know enough about music, create more

harmonious intervals sounded by the notes that are playing at any one instant in the song.

In the easier version, as in Example 2A on the next page, this can all be accomplished in one measure.

The reason to pass out 2 parts in the beginning is to have at least one tube sounding on each of the 4

beats of the measure. So in this example, the Red C sounds on 1 and the Short Red C’ sounds on 2, 3

and 4. So they could be started together and then the other parts added one tube at a time. Also, in this

example the Orange D also sounds on 2, 3 and 4 (as well as the upbeat between 3 and 4), so

alternatively the Red C and Orange D could be used to start the song.

Of course, one tube could sound on all 4 beats, but it makes for a more interesting song if you avoid

doing that.

You may note that the Short Red C’ does hit on beats 2, 3 and 4 in the first measure, as in Example 2A,

but does not in the second measure. This already makes this 2-measure grouping of patterns more

difficult to hand out with any particular beginning pair. So if you happen to have someone already

holding the pulse with a drum of some sort (which is always nice to have), you can easily get these

patterns going one tube at a time. Otherwise, you may want to structure it to have an easier combination

of patterns for the pair of tubes that you use first to establish the pulse.

This example also uses a lot of syncopation, where parts come in on or happen only on an upbeat.

If you want to get even more rhythmically sophisticated, you can look at working sixteenth notes into the

mix. They are often counted as 1-e-&-a-2-e-&-a, etc. Example 2C shows a variation on 2A in which

some of the patterns that were working in eighths are now switched to sixteenths. Particularly in a onemeasure

pattern, this can add some musical interest without complicating things too much.

You’ll note that we used “open circles” to highlight the 2 places that we switched to using sixteenth notes.

Of course, if you pick up the tempo too much, it won’t be practical to get the quick double hits needed to

keep the pattern in sixteenths.

I once was brought to a conference to work with children of the parents that were attending. It was sort

of an advanced day care with different activities planned and adults that were with the kids all day.

Unbeknownst to the kids and their supervisors, the conference organizers asked me to have them

perform for the whole group after they had worked up a song. Example 2A is in fact the song that we

worked up along with some of the other activities that are presented here. When they had it down, I

asked if they would like to perform for their parents and the rest of the conference attendees. Most were

excited to do so (except the few teenagers who decided it just wasn’t “cool”).

They got up on stage, including some of the adult supervisors. I had a drummer backing me up for the

pulse and then built the rhythm back up one tube at a time by clapping the rhythm to each group of tubes.

When we got the sixth and last tube going so everyone was playing, the audience really got into it and

was clapping along in rhythm. The adult supervisors playing on stage were having as much or more fun

than the kids, and I know it had to be a very memorable experience especially for the kids to get up and

perform so spontaneously in front of about 900 people.

When a song is created using the techniques in #3, there are a variety of things that can be done to

create more interest than occurs by simply repeating the same patterns for a long stretch of time. One

aspect is covered in #5, where the participants create their own changes at a particular point. Here we

discuss other things that can be done, either before or after they begin to make the song their own.

Without carving out any segments of the participant population to work with separately, the two easiest

“global” parameters to work with are dynamics (volume) and tempo. It works well to play with volume

first, taking it softer for a while and slowly (or quickly) bringing it back up again. Several ups and downs

are possible before it starts to “get old.” Be conscious of not encouraging them to spend a lot of time in a

high-volume mode if they are hitting their opposite hands or other body parts, because the impact will

definitely add up more quickly.

Then using your “lead tube” or other audible percussion instrument, begin to slowly build the tempo, or

speed of the pulse. One of my favorite things to do is to close by speeding up past the point where

anyone can possibly keep any pattern going and the natural result is the now familiar rumble. You can

exactly what the teacher did after I gave a quick demonstration of the tubes. They scattered to different

parts of the room in groups of 4 or 5 to explore, create and work together to come up with something to

present to the rest of the class. It was really great to see what the kids came up with when they had a

chance to exercise their own creativity, and I’m sure the lesson in teamwork was also beneficial.

Play simple familiar songs as you would with a bell choir, each tube playing when its note appears in the

There are many rhythm games that people have made up over the years that can be used when working

with the tubes. It’s an opportunity to exercise your own creativity to make up some of your own. Whacky

Music also produces a number of books of games and activities for the tubes, and more are on the way.

preschool and early elementary ages.

downloading and printing. (EDITOR NOTE--These are now posted on the website!)

The Signals come in single colors and 2 and 3 colored “swatches” for certain

combinations of “open fifth” harmonic intervals and triads (or three-note chords). Once printed they can

be used in facilitating groups by raising and lowering them or pointing to them, etc., to signify that certain

tubes or groups of tubes should play.

Obviously we're just scratching the surface here, but this is enough material to get you started and spur

some ideas of your own. Please feel free to share them with us or just let us know how it's going. Have

fun!

you’ll glean a few more facilitation tips from just a casual glance through the Glossary!

Craig Ramsell is the inventor of the Boomwhackers Tuned Percussion Tubes

and President of Whacky Music, Inc., which produces and distributes the

musical tubes and related products. Having played the classical guitar for most

of his adult life, Craig has been “bit by the percussion bug” ever since inventing

the award-winning musical tubes. His invention has created a fun and simple

way to make music and has revolutionized learning music in schools around the

world. It also adds an entirely new dimension to the drum circle experience.

Craig has appeared on several TV programs and has been written up in

numerous groups, ranging from a few to over a thousand people, including school assemblies,

workshops, fund-raising events and an MIT alumni reunion. He also produced, composed songs for and

performed on the CD Whack Tracks: The Boomwhackers® Sessions.

may awaken your imagination for having even more fun with the Tubes.

(in other words, not keeping a beat).

each others' Tubes.

others and experience the flow of the rhythm you're making.

instruments).

what they are!).

Whacky Music, Inc. 928-282-3860

2085 Mountain Road whacky@boomwhackers.com

Sedona, AZ 86336 www.boomwhackers.com