This is the second video tutorial is in the series called Using The Whacky Wizards Program.
It explains how to use the Rhythm Tutor app to provide fun, engaging music lessons using Boomwhackers.
Thanks for watching this video lesson about The Whacky Wizards RHYTHM TUTOR. While I hope that all the Whacky Wizard apps are simple to use and understand, I consider the Rhythm tutor to be the best starting point for using boomwhackers in your classroom and making connections to the curriculum. I recommend watching this video before watching those prepared for the Whacky Looper and Song Wizard.
The main purpose of the rhythm tutor is to help students to learn and play simple repeating rhythm patterns using two Boomwhackers. However, the rhythm tutor can be used even if you don’t have boomwhackers. Any surface or object that can be tapped will work, and other possibilities beyond Boomwhackers will be explored later in this video.
THE MAIN INTERFACE
When the play button is pressed, a grid of dots is highlighted by a play head – step by step from left to right, indicating where notes should be played. The circles on the top row of the grid represent high notes, while the ones below represent low notes. Empty grid boxes represent silences. The musical counts are highlighted above the grid as the pattern progresses. The words that are highlighted below the rhythm are meant to be spoken aloud when playing as a mnemonic to help learning. This will be further explained in the next section of this lesson.
After the play button is pressed, it transforms into a pause button which will pause the playback at the current place on the grid. The stop button will stop playback and reset it to the beginning.
The other buttons and functions will be explained throughout this video.
MNEMONICS
One of the great lessons for teaching and learning rhythm is the principle of “If you can say it, you can play it”. Using vocalizations to communicate and teach rhythms is used by cultures across the globe, including the extremely complex rhythmic music of West Africa, North India and the Polynesian islands.
I HIGHLY recommend starting any new rhythm on the rhythm tutor by simply speaking the words aloud as they are highlighted. Do this before passing out any instruments. Multi-syllable words are sometimes broken in unusual ways, but new words are always capitalized to help see the breaks.
When you do start playing boomwhackers or other instruments, it’s a good practice to continue articulating the words at the same time. This will take more practice for some students than others, but it is a proven way of building up the synaptic connections in the brain to understand music at a deeper level.
PLAYING ALONG
I recommend that students tap the lower pitched instrument with their LEFT hands and the higher pitched instrument with their RIGHT. This will help when using the other apps on the Whacky Wizards website.
This is something I am fairly picky about. Using the same hands consistently helps develop muscle memory and will allow the students to learn the rhythms at a deeper level.
Even if the student is left-handed, I encourage them to follow this rule to help them synchronize with their classmates, but I will leave that to your discretion. They key is consistency. Don’t let them switch back and forth.
The rhythm tutor can be used by groups or individuals. If playing alone any two boomwhackers from the one-octave set can be used. If boomwhackers are not available, try playing along with two empty soda bottles of different size for high and low notes, or tapping on two sizes of empty can. Anything that can be used to play these patterns will help with rhythmic understanding and will transfer directly to using musical instruments.
CHANGING NOTES
The Rhythm Tutor grid is interactive, in that by clicking on a circle you can remove that note or by clicking in an empty space you can add one. This is particularly useful to modify the patterns for young players or those just starting out with rhythm in the following way – Drop all the notes to the bottom line or raise all the notes to the top line, which makes the rhythm easier to follow by simple clapping, tapping or only using one boomwhacker.
Eventually I hope to include the capacity to invent your own rhythms in the app and even add your own mnemonics. For now, you can have fun creating by simply modifying the existing rhythms by adding or subtracting notes, or try inventing your own on the blank grid available in the pattern menu.
CHOOSE A PATTERN MENU
This menu allows you to choose from a number of different rhythmic patterns, each with a unique mnemonic. Certain rhythmic patterns that can be learned here will help with playing multiple patterns in the Whacky Looper. In the future, I hope to increase the variety of patterns here, and create some lessons to learn rhythmic patterns specific to cultures from around the world.
CHOOSE A DRUM LOOP MENU
Choosing a drum loop adds an accompaniment for your music making, allowing your students to feel like they are playing along with the band. Some of these drum loops correspond to rhythmic music from other cultures, such as the Samba from Brazil, the Son Montuno from Cuba, and the djembe rhythm Kuku from Guinea. See the additional resources for this lesson to show your students videos with other examples of music from these countries and in these styles.
DISTRIBUTING BOOMWHACKERS
If you are using Boomwhackers to use this app (rather than simply tapping along or using found sounds such as bottles or cans), I recommend letting the students choose the colors they want to try when starting out. Let them choose one from the low bucket and one from the high bucket as outlined in the using Boomwhackers in your classroom video. They important thing at first is to have them distinguish between low sounds and high sounds.
Later you can try getting them to choose in interval pairs. The best choice to start will be a fifth, as this will still require them to take one instrument from each bucket. This will create a more harmonious sound in the class as well.
THE DRUM/BOOMWHACKER SWITCH
This switch allows you to switch between various drums or boomwhackers as the playback sound. If you letting the students choose random high and low instruments to play back the rhythm, you can change to drum sounds which will emphasize the highs and lows more generally. Using the boomwhacker sounds is better in other circumstances. The details for each choice will be outlined further in the next section.
THE BOOMWHACKER MENU
The default choice when you open the app is Boomwhackers, with the long red C as the low pitch and the green G as the high pitch. Individual low and high pitches can be chosen from their respective menus. The menus will never allow you to choose a pitch higher than the current high pitch as the low pitch, and vice versa.
Using the boomwhacker sound as playback is particularly useful in the following four situations:
THE DRUM MENU
Switching to drum sounds changes the circles to two shades of blue that don’t correspond to any specific boomwhackers. Dark Blue on the bottom row are Low notes, light blue on the top are high. The menu allows you to change the drum sound to a number of different kinds of drums from around the world. The default sound is the Djembe, a drum from West Africa. The Bongo is perhaps the drum type that is easiest to hear when playing boomwhackers.
Check out the additional resources with this lesson to learn more about each of these types of drums. There images, descriptions, and some videos showcasing these drums in the music and places where they are from. This is a great way to help students gain an appreciation for rhythms and music from other parts of the world.
TEMPO SLIDER and BPMS
The tempo slider allows you to slow down or speed up the playback. The slider is responsive during playback, but can also be set when playback is stopped.
The playback speed is shown in BPM, or beats per minute. The BPM will display half as much if 16th notes are selected in by the beat division button, but this doesn’t affect the actual speed of playback. This is explained further in the following section of the lesson.
BEAT DIVISION
The beat division button allows you to change the beat division to either an 8TH or 16TH note counting base. Most experienced musicians would count and feel these rhythms on a 16th note base, where the dark lines of the grid divide a single measure into 4 beats. However, for less experienced learners, the 8th note division is easier to count. Because the numbers above the grid indicate beats, and there are twice as many numbers in the 8th note grid, the BPM doubles.
Understanding beat division and being able to count along to music is an incredibly valuable skill. To have the students understand the concept of beat division, have them count along with the beats and divisions both while not playing along, and while playing along. To have them understand where the beats fall, try saying the words to the rhythm while clapping on all the beats (spaces with numbers). Do this on both 16th and 8th note bases, even if the kids don’t fully understand the difference yet. I hope to do a video lesson to explain beat counting and rhythm in more detail.
VOLUME AND MUTE
There are volume sliders to adjust the volume of both the pattern and the accompanying drum loop. You can mute either of these parts with the buttons to the right of the volume sliders.
CREATING CHALLENGES
The entire teaching philosophy of whacky wizards is to use one of the principles of learning that video games have employed for ages. Participants stay engaged when the activity keeps them on a cusp where it is just barely beyond their current capacity. The goal is always to unlock the next level.
Think of the elements that can be manipulated in the app as ways to constantly push the capacity of your students a little higher. Speed is the most obvious one. Try playing the rhythms at different tempos to stretch the upper and lower limits of your student’s capacities. You will find that it’s just as hard or harder for them to play accurately slow as it is to play fast.
Volume is another way to add a challenge. Drop the volume down a notch and ask the students to play quiet enough that they can still hear the sounds in the app. Try playing both softly and loudly.
As an advanced challenge with volume, once your students have learned a pattern well, mute the main pattern to see if they can play along to just the drum loop. This will help them trust their ears more than their eyes. Alternately, mute both the accompaniment and the main loop for a couple of cycles and see how well the kids keep the beat only using their visuals or sense of time. If they are still on the beat when you unmuted the sound, congratulate them. See how many measures they can play without the sounds to guide them and stay on the beat. 4 would be great, 8 would be phenomenal.
Another possibility is to invert rhythms, changing high notes for low notes. This is a good challenge for students once they are familiar or comfortable with the pattern. Don’t allow them to switch instruments between their hands. The low one should still remain on the LEFT and the high one on the right. It’s a brain bender at first, but very good practice.
Adding or subtracting notes from a rhythm also can add a super challenge, and change the feel of the rhythm. See if they can think of ways to change the words to accommodate the new notes. Make sure their words use the correct number of syllables!
When your students get good at adapting to modified rhythms, change notes on the fly, adding or subtracting a note from the pattern every couple of measures as the looper is playing.
I hope that this video gives you a good understanding of the Rhythm Tutor app and opens up your mind to the many ways you can employ it in the classroom. If you have any questions, please contact me. I’d love to hear about ways in which you have been able to use it and what innovations you may have discovered. Please tell me about your experience or any feedback you have in the comments below.
As always, thanks for watching. See you soon.
Please see the challenges section at the end of the video or video transcription.
The following tables outline the curricular connections that are addressed by principles presented in this tutorial.
In particular, it lists which Specific Learner Expectations (Concepts and Skills) are covered according to the
Alberta Curriculum for Elementary Music.
Those expectations that are addressed partially or indirectly rather than explicitly are displayed in italics.
To get the most from these tables, please visit the page explaining Whacky Wizards Curricular Connections.
| Rhythm | Melody | Harmony | Form | Expression |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Music may move to a steady beat. | 1. Sounds may be high or low. | 1. Two or more sounds can occur simultaneously. | 3. Music is organized into phrases. | 1. The beat in music may be fast or slow (tempo). |
2. Music may move evenly or unevenly. | 3. A sequence of sounds may move from low to high, high to low, or stay the same. | 7. Pitched percussion instruments can be combined to make harmony. | 2. Music may be soft (p) or loud (f), dynamics. | |
3. Music is made up of long sounds, short sounds and silences. | 6. Printed symbols in music show the direction of the melody. | 4. Musical instruments have different tonal qualities. | ||
4. There are strong and weak beats in music. | 9. An interval is the space between two sounds. – An interval may be changed by an accidental. – Intervals give shape or contour to a melody. | 8. Music may be fast or slow and may change from one to the other suddenly or gradually (tempo). | ||
5. Long sounds, short sounds and silences may be grouped to form rhythm patterns. |
| |||
7. Rhythm patterns are made up of the beat and divisions of the beat. | ||||
8. Beats may be grouped by accent (a stress in music). | ||||
9. Sounds and silences have specific duration . | ||||
13. A time signature tells how beats are grouped in a measure. | ||||
14. Beats may be grouped in 4s. | ||||
16. Duration concepts are extended to include sixteenth notes. | ||||
19. Rhythm is created by combining beat, tempo, patterns, metre and duration. |
Listening | Moving | Singing | Playing Instruments | Reading & Writing | Creating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2. Identify and compare sounds (musical and non-musical): high–low, loud–soft, short–long, slow–fast, up–down. | 3. Respond to beat through action and simple body percussion. | 1. Distinguish between children’s speaking and singing voices. | 1. Explore the sound of various musical instruments. | 1. Recognize “ta” and “ti–ti” rhythm patterns. | 2. Use instruments to create sounds of high–low, loud–soft, slow–fast, short–long, up–down. |
4. Distinguish among the sounds of common musical instruments. | 2. Respond to tone matching and echo games. | 2. Play a steady beat using rhythm instruments. | 2. Recognize the following rhythm patterns on large charts, and follow from left to right: Ta, Ti-Ti, Rest. | 3. Create singing “conversations” (tone matching). | |
6. Understand and appreciate the effect of music that is high–low, loud–soft, short–long, slow–fast, up–down. | 10. Respond to tone matching with other voices and instruments. | 3. Discover that some instruments play low notes and some play high notes. | 3. Echo clap and chant written rhythm patterns. | 4. Make up new words to songs. | |
10. Identify “like” and “unlike” patterns in music. | 4. Echo rhythm patterns. | 4. Draw “stick” rhythm patterns on paper. | 5. Create melodic and/or percussion accompaniments for poems and songs. | ||
11. Respond to phrases in music. | 5. Accompany singing with appropriate body percussion and movement (beat, accent, rhythm patterns) and transfer these to instruments. | 5. Respond to simple instrumental scores on large charts. | |||
16. Identify repetition and contrast. | 6. Play rhythm instruments correctly. | 11. Follow notation from left to right while singing and playing. | |||
8. Play simple rhythm patterns (the beat and divisions of the beat). | 19. Recognize 4/4 time signature. | ||||
9. Follow simple rhythm scores. | 29. Develop skill in writing rhythm patterns. | ||||
10. Play rhythmic and ostinato patterns to accompany songs. |
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Can’t tell a quarter note from a treble clef? Are sharp and flat just words you would use to describe a knife? You’re not alone.
In fact, Whacky Wizards was created to be used by people just like you. The program was researched and designed specifically for teachers who had been asked to teach music but who often:
After a 10-week trial period with the program, every one of these teachers said that their confidence and competence for music instruction had improved.
The best part is that even if you don’t need musical knowledge to use the program, there are plenty of opportunities to learn. The site features an amazing 5-part tutorial series called “How Music Works” which teaches the most essential elements of music in a way that is approachable and pragmatic. These ‘go-at-your-own-pace’ video lessons offer instruction on how to learn and apply these concepts while using the program.
Whacky Wizards is a program dedicated to help groups of all descriptions easily make music in a fun, interactive, and highly engaging way using Boomwhackers™ percussion tubes. The program has special features for educators, but can be used by any group wanting to have a great time making music.
The site revolves around three custom apps which focus on different aspects of music making – The Song Wizard, The Rhythm Tutor, and The Whacky Looper.
The content of the site is presented in modules which feature different songs (using The Song Wizard) or rhythmic patterns (Using The Rhythm Tutor and The Whacky Looper). Each module contains tips and instructions for playing it’s featured music with your group, as well as instructional resources for teachers and those wanting to expand their musical knowledge.
Whacky Wizards is a program dedicated to help groups of all descriptions easily make music in a fun, interactive, and highly engaging way using Boomwhackers™ percussion tubes. The program has special features for educators, but can be used by any group wanting to have a great time making music.
The site revolves around three custom apps which focus on different aspects of music making – The Song Wizard, The Rhythm Tutor, and The Whacky Looper.
The content of the site is presented in modules which feature different songs (using The Song Wizard) or rhythmic patterns (Using The Rhythm Tutor and The Whacky Looper). Each module contains tips and instructions for playing it’s featured music with your group, as well as instructional resources for teachers and those wanting to expand their musical knowledge.
One Response
One thing that we have been doing in 5/6 this week is using the Rhythm Tutor as a movement break. I will put it up on the smart board and tell the kids to take a step every time a note should be played. If I am trying to help them calm down we will start quickly and get slower. If I am trying to give them a break or trying to help them wake up we will start slow and get faster.