Materials and Preparation

• For younger students, make copies of the handout. It is available as a PDF file or below, as a figure. (The PDF file will give a nicer-looking handout.)
• A globe, map of the world, or map of Africa would be useful as a visual aid.
• If you are going to use rubber bands or a guest percussionist to do the Stretching Raises the Pitch demonstration, you may want to be prepared to do this during your discussion.
• If you are going to have someone demonstrate a tonal language, or have a picture book, photos, or sound clips of talking drums to share (see below), you may also want have these ready to present during the discussion.
• If you want young students to color the handout during or after your discussion, have their crayons or markers available.

Objectives and Standards

• Objectives - Using either rubber bands or available musical instruments, the students will demonstrate or attend a demonstration of the basic acoustics principle that the stretching and tightening caused by pulling on a vibrating object raises its pitch. (For a more complete demonstration project, see Sound and Music).
• Music Standards Addressed - National Standards for Music Education standard 8 (understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts).
• Other Subjects Addressed - The activity also addresses National Science Education Standards in physical science, science and technology, and science in personal and social perspective.
• Evaluation - Assess student learning by evaluating class participation or asking relevant questions in an oral review or on a written test: e.g. "How can you make a drum sound higher?"

• The simplest way to demonstrate this is with rubber bands. Let one student stretch a rubber band between two fingers while another student plucks it. Listen to the sound the rubber band makes; the tighter it is stretched, the higher the sound. If it is stretched or relaxed quickly immediately after being plucked, you may even be able to hear the pitch slide up or down, just like it does in a talking drum.
• Many hobby books on making musical instruments include instructions for making a drum with a stretched head held in place by strings. If it is made of good materials, you should be able to change the pitch of such a drum by tightening or loosening the strings. Pursue this only if you are interested in a major class project which will require specific materials and take several hours.
• You may be able to get a local band director or percussionist to bring in some drums with heads that can be tightened and loosened to change the pitch. Ask for a demonstration, and an explanation of the methods of tightening and loosening drum heads. Many percussionists won't have a waisted drum, but many other drums (such as orchestral tympani) are also "tunable".
• The basic idea can also be demonstrated with any stringed instrument (guitar, violin, banjo, cello, etc.): as you turn the tuning peg you are winding or unwinding the string, making it tighter or looser.

Objectives and Standards

• Objectives - Students will actively participate in a demonstration of how tonality affects meaning even in a nontonal language, by demonstrating and explaining how different inflections cause slight differences in the meaning of a short word or phrase in English.
• Music Standards Addressed - National Standards for Music Education standards 8 (understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts) and 9 (understanding music in relation to history and culture).
• Other Subjects Addressed - The activity also addresses National Standards in the Social Studies standard 1 (culture), and National Standards for the English Language Arts standards 4 (Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.) and 9 (Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles).
• Evaluation - Assess student learning by evaluating class participation or asking relevant questions in an oral review or on a written test: e.g. "What is a tonal language?"
• Adaptations - For best comprehension, this activity should be presented to students using their native language, dialect, and accent. The teacher should adjust the activity accordingly.

Procedure

1. Have students try saying the word "here" in many different ways: slowly or crisply, with the voice rising, falling, monotone, rising and then falling, etc. Which one means "Do you want it here?" Which means "Yes, I want it here!". Do different tones seem to mean "You called my name and I'm present" or "Are you looking for me? I'm over here" or "Ha ha, you never spotted me. Here I am!" Can they discover other "here"'s that seem to mean different things?
2. They can try the same game with other words: "there", "this", "that", "what", "OK", "cool", "hey", "now", "dude", etc. Can the students think of other words or short phrases that work well as demonstrations?
3. Have the students pretend that they are hearing someone call them from a long distance away. What does it sound like? Do their voices adopt a kind of sing-song quality in which the last syllable sounds about a minor third lower than the rest of the name? This is close to the type of sounds in some tonal languages.
4. Can the students imagine an adult saying "bye bye" or "what a smart little girl" or "that's a no-no, sweetie" to a little baby? Can they imagine an excited preacher singing out "Amen!" or "Do you believe?" What does it sound like? These are also times when English can sound a little like a tonal language.

Objectives and Standards

• Objectives - Students will construct simple kazoos or use commercially-made kazoos. Students use the kazoos, or humming, to try to convey meaning using only the rhythm and inflection of a sentence.
• Music Standards Addressed - National Standards for Music Education standard 8 (understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts) and 9 (understanding music in relation to history and culture).
• Other Subjects Addressed - The activity also addresses National Standards in the Social Studies standard 1 (culture), and National Standards for the English Language Arts standards 4 (Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.) and 9 (Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles).
• Evaluation - Assess student learning by evaluating class participation and success in communicating and guessing phrases.

Materials and Preparation

• One pocket comb per player
• Tissue paper
• Or use commercially made kazoos

Procedure

1. For each kazoo, cut out of tissue paper a rectangle with a length slightly longer than the comb and a width slightly wider than twice the width of the comb.
2. Fold the tissue paper in half over the teeth of the comb.
3. Holding the tissue paper in place over both sides of the comb, play the kazoo by placing the lips lightly against the tissue paper and humming.
4. Encourage the students to use common and easily recognizable phrases (for example, an expression or slang phrase that is very popular at the moment), and to put as much expression as possible into the phrase. Explain that the goal is to communicate, not to stump their audience. When a phrase is successfully guessed, the student that hummed it has succeeded.
5. Using the kazoos, the students take turns humming familiar phrases to each other and trying to guess the phrase based simply on its rhythm and inflections.

Objectives and Standards

• Objectives - Using body percussion or simple drums provided or made for the purpose, the student will turn the rhythm of a given sentence into a two-toned drum rhythm.
• Music Standards Addressed - National Standards for Music Education standard 8 (understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts) and 9 (understanding music in relation to history and culture).
• Other Subjects Addressed - The activity also addresses National Standards in the Social Studies standard 1 (culture), and National Standards for the English Language Arts standards 4 (Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.) and 9 (Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles).
• Evaluation - Assess student learning by evaluating class participation.

Materials and Preparation

• This activity can be done with any two drums that sound different from each other. You can use toy drums, real drums, or homemade drums.
• Or turn ordinary objects into drums (pots, bowls, desks, books) and drumsticks (pencils, rulers, sticks). See Percussion Fast and Cheap for other suggestions.
• Or if you do not want to bother with drums, use clapping, finger-snapping, thigh slapping, stomping, or other "body percussion."

Procedure

1. If necessary, introduce or review the concept of strong and weak syllables.
2. Assign one drum or sound (e.g. clapping) for strong syllables, and one drum or sound (e.g. finger snapping) for weak syllables.
3. Let the students take turns.
4. One student says a sentence. Encourage long, creative sentences. ("I wish we could have pizza for lunch today" rather than "I want pizza".)
5. Another student beats or claps out the rhythm of the sentence (da-DUM-da-da-da-DUM-da-da-DUM-da-da). Encourage them to mimic the natural rhythm of the sentence as much as possible. After one person has played the rhythm, see if the entire group can "play" the sentence together.
6. Ask the students: Is there a particular length or type of sentence that is easiest to turn into a rhythm that everyone can agree on? Do the rhythms of the sentences sound alike or different? If two sentences sound too much alike, what could be done to make them sound different?
7. If you are also studying poetry, try this activity with poetry. Can the students identify meter, line length, and poem type just from drum rhythms?

• If a picture book is appropriate for your students, consider sharing with them Talking Drums of Africa by Christine Price (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973). Featuring the Ashanti people of Ghana and the Yoruba of Nigeria, it explains how the drums are put together, how they are used, how they "talk", and the part they play in the culture.
• If any members of the class speak a tonal language (Chinese, for example), or if a parent or other adult is available for a demonstration, ask them to help the class with a show-and-tell that demonstrates how the meaning of words in their language changes with inflection.
• At the time of this writing, photos and sound clips of talking drums could be found at the web site of the Nigerian Talking Drum Ensemble.