Bruce Mack Speaks: Sparking The Creative Mind of Your Child
An Afternoon Jam: Sparking the Creative Mind of your Child
Everyone is creative but not everyone is encouraged to express themselves creatively. To create is to invite the unexpected, the unrehearsed, unpracticed, the spontaneous and surprising into your life. Sound like nothing anyone has asked of you lately? Sound like an opportunity you’ve presented to your kid recently? Well here’s a great way to invite the muse into your family: A Drum Circle Jam!
No need to worry if you know how to play a musical instrument or even have one available. No need to worry if you can’t carry a tune, or keep time.
The Drum Circle Jam works well with percussive instruments because creating a pulse or making “a beat” is the simplest way to make music. A “beat” can be created on almost anything, but if you want to preserve your furniture, not mark up the wood floor or not spend money on instruments, it’s easy enough to make your own. Coffee cans, oatmeal boxes, trash cans, old pots & pans, soda cans, storage bins, all lend themselves to be tapped, slapped, and wacked. You can even make your own sticks or mallets as part of the event. or, wooden spoons, chop-sticks, pencils and the bare hand will do just fine.
No need to worry about where the beat is going to come from. Before you start, just ask everyone to add their own beat “to see what we come up with”. Be open to the creativity. After a few minutes of everyone doing their own thing stop the music and appoint a leader to start a rhythm. Rhythm and repetition is a great way to get the musical mind imagining things to play. Take turns leading the beat.
Last but not least, spend some time talking about the music you made. During the discussion is when one’s creativeness is actually logged into memory and a child begins forming his or her own encyclopedia of music ideas.
An excellent time for the Drum Circle Jam is just before dinner. Then during dinner, the experience can be discussed and musical ideas shared that were created during the jam! Keep the discussion informal so the fun of it continues, creating an atmosphere for it to happen again. Once or twice a month is good, but if a family band is formed, you might end up doing this once a week.
Bruce Mack is a music educator and musician. To read more about his work, click here or go to www.BruceMack.com.
April 6th, 2009
