Basic Drum Circle Exercise #2

This month in my music groups, we are exploring the element of rhythm.  One of the easiest and most fun ways to do this is by playing in a drum circle.  For my drum circles, we always play through a round or two of my basic commands, which you can see here.

A simple exercise we start with early in the month is composing our own rhythm patterns!  We begin with basic choices, such as:

|              BEAT—one sound on one beat   (AKA—“ta” or quarter note)

|ˉ|         DOU-BLE—two sounds on one beat (AKA—“ti-ti” or beamed eighth notes)

Z              (REST)—no sound on one beat   (AKA—“(no sound)” or quarter rest)

Each student is asked to choose FOUR of any combination of those options.  They may choose four BEATs, or BEAT BEAT DOUBLE BEAT, or some smart alecks like to chose four RESTs, and those are all okay responses! :) We play them back as a group in a repeating pattern, or ostinato, until I feel they have mastered it.

As we move forward through the year, we add more complicated notes such as:

|ˉ|ˉ|     LOLLIPOP—three sounds on one beat (AKA—“tri-puh-let” or triplet notes)

|̿|̿|̿|̿|    TIKITAKI—four sounds on one beat (AKA—“ti-ri-ti-ri” or beamed sixteenth notes)

d             LONG NOTE—one sound across two beats (AKA—“ta-a” or half note)

d.            REAL LONG NOTE—one sound across three beats (AKA—“ta-a-a” or dotted half note)

o             REAL-LY LONG NOTE—one sound across three beats (AKA—“ta-a-a-a” or whole note)

__g__ (LONG REST)—no sound across two beats (AKA—“re-est” or half rest)

ˉˉgˉˉ   (REAL-LY LONG REST)—no sound across four beats (AKA—“re-eh-eh-est” or whole rest)

The notations are taken from standard Kodaly notation, not using the filled-in noteheads as a sort of shorthand.  If you'd like to see how these look handwritten, which is how I use them with my kiddos, post a comment and I'll share a pic!