Improvising rhythms with Boomwhackers sound most impressive in larger groups. We can provide a Boomwhacker rhythm activity for any number of participants from about 50 up to hundreds or even thousands! Ideal for team building conference energisers, private parties, wedding evening receptions and more! Just contact us to discuss your requirements if you are interested in a massed Boomwhacker activity.

You can also use the Boomwhackers tuned specific notes to play melodies if you have a lot of hands, or a few friends to play along with you!

Junk Percussion

Using waste containers etc. as drums and percussion instruments is a great way to help the environment by recycling and save money at the same time! Instead of forking out hundreds on an expensive hand drum why not try out some empty plastic tubs first? You'll be surprised how good some things sound that you have lying around your house or garage!

You can use similar hand drumming techniques as taught at the top of this page to play the bottom of plastic containers and tubs, or use beaters and sticks.

Bass drum beaters can be made cheaply from sticks of dowel with a piece of rubber or foam pipe insulation taped around the end and cloth secured around it. For smaller tubs, bottles and metal found-sounds try using plastic chopsticks.

Here are some great sounding easily available junk percussion instruments and ideas to play them:

• Plastic bottles with ridges can be scraped like a Guiro with a plastic chopstick - collect enough bottles and you can use the lids in a larger container as a shaker!
• Large office water cooler bottles can sound beautiful when played like a hand drum
• Weight gain or protein supplement tubs and buckets make good hand/bass drums depending on size
• Large plastic bins, barrels and industrial containers turned upside down can be great bass drums when played with beaters
• Vitamin containers partially filled with different contents can make interesting sounding shakers - try experimenting with different fillers such as dry beans of varying sizes, fine gravel or ball bearings.
• Old metal baking trays, tins, pans and pan lids can be tricky to play, but if you can fasten or tie a piece of string to it, you can find good sounding bells, cymbals and gongs! (Holding the string and allowing the metal tin to hang freely allows it to vibrate and sustain a better sound)

If you've got percussionitis and can't stop yourself from tapping and drumming away on surfaces where ever you are, like we do too often, then you're sure to discover some great sounding junk percussion items. Just remember to wash them thoroughly, remove any sharp edges and make them safe before use!

We have a wide mixture of safe junk percussion instruments that we use to facilitate group rhythm events for up to 200 participants. Just email or phone us to book a low budget junk percussion activity for your event!

We hope you have fun experimenting with these different rhythm making techniques. Please get in touch if you would like us to lead a workshop or group rhythm activity to help guests at your event have fun making music in one or more of these ways!