Do you want to get musical? Looking for an opportunity to be creative? To problem solve? What if you don’t have any instruments to hand? And no budget or time to source them?
This is where junk modelling instruments come in! Junk modelling refers to a creative activity where you use materials that would otherwise be recycled or wasted to make something new. Rather than buying in craft materials or kits, junk modelling allows you to get inventive and make something new.
Junk Modelling Instruments
A wide range of instruments can be junk-modelled:
- Drums: Cover plastic pots, tins or stiff carboard tubes with a skin of parchment paper, balloons, or plastic lids. To make a pelt drum, add strings with beads or beans tied on to them which will hit the drum when spun.
- Shakers: Lentils, peas, buttons, beads, rice in any secure container can be shaken. Experiment using different fillings and different sized containers to see how the sound changes!
- Strings: Elastic bands stretched over boxes and tubes can be plucked with your fingers.
- Tuned percussion: Taping together strong carboard tubes of different lengths creates a tuned percussion instrument that will produce sounds of different pitches, depending on which tube is struck
- Wind: Similarly, taping together straws of different lengths will create sounds of different pitches when you blow across the top of them, like a pan flute.
Playing Junk Modelled Instruments
Once you have made your instruments, you can use them in a range of games and activities. Improvisation is always fun (and encouraged!) but if you want some ideas for structured musical games, look no further.
- Copy Me: One person plays a simple rhythm on their instrument and then everyone else copies. This can be repeated with each person taking their turn to play a rhythm for others to copy.
- Simon Says: The leader will call out instructions like “Simon says play loud” or “Simon says play slow” and everyone else adjusts how they are playing to follow the instruction. If the leader calls out an instruction without saying “Simon says”, then nobody follows that instruction. If they do, they’re out!
- Sound Detective: Everyone closes their eyes or turns their back on the instruments while one person picks an instrument to play. Other players must then guess which instrument was being played.
Enjoy creating all kinds of new weird and wonderful instruments with your junk. And remember, you don’t need expensive instruments or resources to get creative and have fun with music!
