Everyday Objects
I love music. Not just any music, folk music. Not the electric kind, more so the acoustic sounds that are made by both real and inventive instruments. Let me be more specific; strings and rhythm instruments are my favorites. Guitar, violin, mandolin are all instruments that I’ve played. I’ve also tried viola and string bass.
I’ve never played drums, my neighbors wouldn’t have appreciated it, and didn’t have much success with piano. Reading music wasn’t my forte.
Getting involved with folk music, introduced me to another form of instruments. Some are real and others more comedic used in performances that make satire out of classical music, such as P.D.Q. Bach. How many of you know how to play a left-handed sewer flute or a bicycle?
I really enjoy dabbling with these inventive instruments. Here are a few of those that I’ve played spoons, hand saw, bones, nose flute (affectionately called a humanatone), washboard, Jew’s harp (or Jaw harp), washtub bass, and the ever-popular shower hose (A shower hose connected to a funnel on one end and a trumpet mouthpiece on the other).
I even played, in performance, with a community band a piece that called for a vacuum cleaner. There were three called for in the piece and I was the lead vacuumist.
In 1980, our middle school band went to England to meet a marching kazoo band and perform. I was one of the chaperones and even did a quick study on saxophone to help out. We had to fill out a questionnaire about ourselves so that we could each be placed with families that lived there. On mine I noted two things, I pick up accents naturally, so people shouldn’t be offended if I start talking in their dialect, and that I tend to make instruments out of everyday objects.
When we got to England another teacher and I were placed with a lovely old woman in Forest Town in Mansfield. Obviously, she and the bus driver that was driving us around had all read my survey answers. I was inundated with “Can you say this, “Dun’s dun” and the like. It’s sometimes hard for me to talk with an accent on the spot, most of the time it comes naturally. Though in this case, I didn’t have much trouble with that. It was then that they started bringing out objects, like a stovepipe and asked, “Can you make music out of this?” In that, I was really challenged, but I managed.
Nowadays I sometimes bring out my strange instruments and share them with elementary school classes I’m subbing in, especially when they are studying a science unit on sound.
It’s easy to make a homemade kazoo with waxed paper and a comb, but can you imagine what a $20 marching kazoo looks like. I can.
