Drum Circle Ideas for the Music Classroom

Ideas for a fun percussion lesson - even if you donʼt know one end of a drumstick from

another!

Drumming can be fun. It can also be an absolute nightmare in a classroom. Lots of kids

with loud “hitty” things can be enjoyable and a fun activity, or it can just mean a headache

for the teacher (Quite literally!)

This article is intended to be a few quick ideas that you can do with students at any stage,

and using just about any instruments you have. Anything that you hit, scrape or shake to

make sound will be great for this.

OUTCOMES - What students will learn in this lesson:

• Students will learn about TIMBRE -

the quality of sound, by exploring

the contrast between sound groups

• Students will learn about

DYNAMICS - through following a

conductor and varying their volume

• Students will lean about RHYTHM

and IMPROVISATION by

improvising a one bar pattern.

About the Author

Kevin Tuck has a masters degree in percussion. However, that isnʼt really

any reason why you should read this article. A masters degree doesnʼt mean

much when it comes to making kids enjoy drumming. That however, is

something that Kevin has been working on for the last ten years, as he has

travelled far and wide doing running drumming and percussion workshops in

schools.

Recently, Kevin has been studying and practicing running community drum

circles and corporate team building drumming events. Kevin hopes to

continue to build his skills as a facilitator of great fun and energizing

drumming events, both in schools and in the wider community.1. What you need

The first thing youʼll have to think about before attempting a drum circle class is to make

sure that you have adequate instruments available.

What instruments can you use?

Pretty much anything!

Itʼd be great if you had a good quality Djembe for

each and every student, but of course we all

know that something like that is next to

impossible. You can do this with pretty much

anything you have available to you in your

classroom.

Even if you have NO instruments at all - you can

use some imagination and come up with a few

“junk percussion” ideas which you can implement

from items you may have lying around.

What instruments are best?

What is good to do is have a MIXTURE of four groups of instruments:

DRUMS

Djembes, Bongos, Conga drums are the most commonly associated

drums for this type of drumming. Basically and drum that you play

with your HANDS are ideal for this type of activity. Traditional “drum

kit” drums are really not that useful, as they really are designed for

sticks. You can use the floor tom as a low drum, and try and find a

nice big soft mallet for it. Other types of drums like old fashioned

“Tambors” are useful, as are “frame drums” and any other skinned

instrument.

WOODEN SOUNDS

This includes Wood Blocks, Temple Blocks, Claves, Jam Blocks

(which are modern, plastic wood blocks), Rhythm Sticks and Tapping sticks. Youʼll need a

stick to hit these instruments. Try and find a SHORT stick - that way it canʼt make too

much noise!!

METAL SOUNDS

These include cowbells of all shapes and sizes, tuned bells, triangles and small gongs.

Once again, if you can get SHORT sticks they are limited in the volume that they can

produce.SHAKERS + SCRAPERS

These include maracas, egg shakers, guiros, tube shakers, home-made shakers from tubs

of rice & gravel, and rainsticks. Anything can fall into this group! This is obviously going to

be the quietest group, so we need to mix them around into the rest of the group so that

they are heard.

How many do you need?

For this lesson youʼll need one instrument per student. You can have as many instruments

as you like, but the minimum is to have one “something” for everyone in the group to play.

Students will rotate regularly, so they wont spend the whole session playing one

instrument.

2.How to set up

This is a drum circle activity, so guess how weʼll set up?

A circle of course!

Donʼt wait until the students are in the room. If at all possible get in there early and

have the circle set up before your students arrive. This will save all that confusion of

getting started. Set up enough chairs for the participants in a fairly close circle, with no

gaps. Then place instruments on the chairs ready for them.

Place them in the order of DRUM - WOOD SOUND - METAL SOUND - SHAKER and so

on around the circle. It isnʼt essential that you have one of each sound group, but it really

does help.

3.How to start and stop

When you bring in the students theyʼll want to start hitting immediately. Its a good idea with

school students to establish a few rules straight away, or youʼll have bedlam before you

know it, and the beginnings of that headache in the first two minutes.

Doing this with virtually any school group I would have a written activity that I could hold in

reserve, and make it clear when you start that if they are silly about it then youʼll stop doing

it, and youʼll do written work instead. For the majority of classes thatʼll scare them enough,

as doing an hour of fun drumming beats an hour of written work any day!!

Let them know that there will be a time to play and a time to stop, and when weʼre stopped

it is important that they listen and are ready to follow instructions. Donʼt talk too loudly, and

donʼt ever talk over them tapping instruments. If anyone is tapping an instrument while

youʼre talking, have them put the instruments down on the floor and not touch them.

Talking while they are playing just gets worse and worse, and youʼll end up with sore vocal

chords at the end of the day from talking over drumming.There really isnʼt a set rhythm that you have to do. The more rigid you get in the rhythm

that you start with, the more nervous and unsure theyʼll be about starting.

I suggest that you start them off with a simple rhythm like this:

This has the drums playing a mix of quavers and crotchets, and it isnʼt too hard for any of

the instrument groups.

The actual rhythm really doesnʼt matter. Let them know that it is great to improvise around

the pattern they are given, and as long as they are listening and playing in time then theyʼll

have a great time.

Start each instrument group separately, have them practice and then stop. Then start them

one at a time and bring them in all together.

Stop Cues

The single most important skill for you (the leader, facilitator, teacher etc) to master is the

STOP CUE. This needs to be a BIG, HUGE, ENORMOUS movement, and it has to be

totally definite. You canʼt use a little movement of “slitting the throat” like you might if you

just want people to stop doing something normally.

Your group has to KNOW its coming, and they have to know WHICH BEAT you want them

to stop at.

Usually you want them to stop right on beat ONE. Therefore what Iʼll do is hold one finger

in the air and circle around the group (this lets them know that something is about to

happen), then Iʼll hold up four fingers, then three, then two, then one, over four beats, then

Iʼll jump up in the air and down again and move both arms outwards from a crossed arm

position.

This sounds really difficult, but in actual fact it really isnʼt. All you need to do is one big

movement, and make it consistent for each and every time that youʼd like the group to

stop.

Have a look on youtube at drum circle facilitation. Youʼll find lots of great examples of

people leading drum circles for a few ideas on how to start and stop them.4.Game Ideas

Rhythm Improvisation Game.

This game works for all groups - no matter their level of musical experience. What you do

is “pass a rhythm” from one person to the next around the circle. you might start off with a

rhythm like this.

Start and stop game.

The idea of this game is to explore the different sound colors of wood, metal, drums and

shakers. (or as many groups as you have if you donʼt have all of them).

The idea is that you need to get the whole rhythm group going, and then go around the

group, and let just one group know that they are going to keep going once youʼve stopped

the rest of the group. This seems hard, but really isnʼt. Lets say youʼre just going to keep

the shakers going. You might start by walking around the circle making eye contact with

the shaker players, then mouthing out “shakers keep playing”, before giving a big stop cue

and having the rest of the players stop. You should have a massive drop in sound, and

then you can encourage a little clap for the shaker players, then bring back in the rest of

the group. You can use a big vocal cue like 1 - 2 lets all play, or you can gradually bring

back in the group one by one.

Once again, the strength of this activity comes down to how well you can manage the stop

cues. If you arenʼt confident and strong about it, then they wonʼt all stop, and the activity

wonʼt work at all.

Once youʼve done the shakers, then brought everyone else back in, try the wood sounds,

metal sounds and drums.

Once you've done this a few times give them a big stop, and have a talk about what they

have just experienced.

They have just experienced something called TIMBRE. you can explain the meaning of

this word, and talk about how and why instruments have a different timbre from each other.

Dynamic Directors Games

This an opportunity for them to learn about dynamics, and what they mean.

Start by simply directing the group yourself, up for loud, down for soft. Try gradual

crescendos and diminuendos (getting louder and softer) as well as sudden changes. You

can even have half the group on different dynamics from the other half if youʼre feeling

adventurous.

After they have done this a few times, grab a few dynamics flashcards (such as those

available in the Fun Music Company Ultimate Flashcard Set), and see how quickly they

can respond when you show the pp, p, mp, mf, f, ff symbols. Once youʼve done that - empower the students by choosing a student to direct from

among the group. You can make this activity go for a long time, and they wonʼt get bored

having a chance to conduct the group.

Instrument Change game

One thing that I would definitely suggest is that you keep it interesting by regularly rotating

instruments. One thing you can do is have a little cue, like a whistle that you have, thatʼll

mean right away: “Swap to the instrument on your right”. Always have them get up, leave

the instrument on their chair, and move to the next chair. That way, your setup that you

had at the start of the lesson should be maintained throughout, and youʼll be able to run it

right through the

5.Donʼt Overdo it!

Sure this can be fun, but the last piece of advice I have on this is donʼt overdo things. I

have loads more games, and you can find great stuff on the internet with loads of ideas.

Donʼt overdo it though, and make sure that you donʼt try it too often. Kids being Kids will

get bored doing the same thing for weeks on end, so youʼll have to keep it fresh by finding

new ideas and rhythms for them all the time.

You can contact me at the Fun Music Company for any additional advice, and you can find

lots of great ideas on the internet. Try searching on youtube for “drum circle” and you can

find some great master facilitators who conduct brilliant drum circles.

If youʼre nervous about your own skills on the drum, and would like more ideas on what

rhythms to play and playing techniques, then I highly recommend you check out Tim

Irrgangʼs Djembe Secrets course. It is full of really great rhythms that anyone can learn, no

matter their experience level with hand drums.