Ben Opie: Hi, everyone, and welcome to Inventi's Carnival Creations. My name's Ben and I play the oboe in Inventi Ensemble. The oboe looks like this. And when I take the reed out of the top, or my mouthpiece, it sounds like this when it's on its own.
(BEN PLAYS HIGH-PITCHED NOTES)
But when I put it in the instrument, it sounds like this.
(BEN PLAYS MOVING MELODY)
You're going to be hearing a lot more from the oboe in our performance of 'Carnival of the Animals'. The other thing that we're going to be doing today is looking at how to make some music instruments yourselves from objects that you can find in your house. So we've got fossil shakers.
(SHAKER RATTLES)
And we've also got chicken castanets.
(CHICKEN CLICKS)
So I'm gonna hand over to Thea now, who's gonna show you how to make a chicken castanet.
Thea Rossen: Hi, everyone. My name is Thea. And I'm a percussionist. And I'm gonna be playing percussion in the 'Carnival of the Animals' show. Now, normally percussionists play anything that you can hit, so, triangles and wood blocks and snare drums and glockenspiels. And one of my favourite percussion instruments is right here. It is a xylophone. Now, normally xylophones are a little bit bigger than this, but this is my mini tabletop xylophone. So I'm gonna show you what some of the music from 'Carnival of the Animals' sounds like on my xylophone.
(THEA PLAYS PLAYFUL TUNE)
So, you can look forward to that and coming up with some rhythms to play along with that a little bit later. But right now, I'm gonna show you how to make a chicken castanet of your own. Here's one that my dear buddy Ben passed across to me. And there's a couple of different ways you can make them and a couple of things you're going to need.
So, first things first. A pair of scissors. Some sticky tape. You can have some PVA glue if you don't have any sticky tape. Also, ordinary glue stick will be fine. Grab a texta. You should have some yellow cardboard as well. I've already cut my shapes out. Some buttons. And if you have them, googly eyes, like these ones here. But if not, that is absolutely fine, 'cause you can draw the eyes on like we already have on this one here. So, what we're doing is putting buttons on the inside to make the beak go click-click-click. We're gonna make some eyes happen. And there you have your chicken castanet.
Something to keep in mind is that your cardboard needs to be thick enough so that the chicken castanet springs back up again. And if it's not thick enough, if the paper is too thin, just before you make the chicken castanet, spread it out and stick it onto another piece of cardboard or double up with pieces of card so that your chicken castanet will spring back up after you've played it. What I'm gonna do for the first one is I want my eyes to stand up. So, I got two pieces of cardboard and I've just put a little bend in them so that they...stand up like that. And I'm going to stick them right there onto the top of my...chicken castanet head.
So, here we go. Stick the first one. Stick the second one. And press it down. Gotta always put the lid back on. And there are the sticking-up eyes. And I'm just gonna draw the eyes on. So, nice little... You can do the eyes however you like. I like to add a little eyebrow on mine as well. It's not very chickeny, but it makes it look kinda cute.
So, here we go. Those are the eyes. Now we're going to add the buttons. Now, you can use PVA glue for this, but you need to have time for it to dry, and I wanna demonstrate quickly, so I've got some sticky tape. And you just fold the sticky tape back onto itself so that you get a perfect circle and all of the sides are sticky. I've chosen my two buttons. One I'm gonna put at the bottom, right on the tip, right on the edge there. Then I'll get my little tiny bit of sticky tape. I'll roll it into itself. You really don't need very much here. Then you get the second button and you make sure that it lines up with the other button right at the top of the castanet. So, you've got one button at the top, one button at the bottom. And then...
(CASTANET CLICKS)
..there's your chicken castanet. So, that's the second way you can do it. And the last way, I'm gonna do the sticky buttons the same way again. I'm gonna choose different buttons this time. I've got a yellow one and a blue one. Just gonna put it on the bottom. And make sure the one at the top lines up with it.
(CASTANET CLICKS)
Sounds good. And then I am going to put my eyes on. So, I'm gonna use this glue stick, 'cause it's nice and quick. Put eye number one. Press it down. Do you know what? I think I'm gonna use sticky tape instead. You might have a little bit more time. You might be able to spend a little bit more time sticking that down. I'm gonna chop my little roll in half so that I have two perfect little squares. And stick eye number one. Eye number two. G'doing! And there you have a googly-eyed chicken...
(CASTANET CLICKS)
..castanet.
Peter Clark: Thank you, Thea! And how great are these little chicken castanets? I love them! So, my name's Peter and I'm so excited that you're here for the 'Carnival of the Animals', or in the French, 'Le carnaval des animaux'. It's so great you're here. So, before I show us when and how we use our chicken castanets with the music, I wanted to tell you about two of my favourite things. So, the first thing is my violin. I love my violin. It's one of my favourite things. And the other thing...
(PETER SNIFFS)
Mmm! These beautiful daffodils. They're my favourite. They're two of my favourite things. So, I wanted to share three little things about my violin. The first thing is that it's about as big as my head. That's about how big it is. The second thing is that unlike the beautiful xylophone, where Thea is using her sticks to make a sound, I don't use my bow to hit. I play my bow across the four strings like this.
(PETER PLAYS RAPID TUNE)
And the third thing that I love is that I can make a beautiful song with my violin. Do you wanna hear a bit?
(PETER PLAYS BEAUTIFUL SONG)
Oh! I love that sound. So, with these amazing little...
(CASTANET CLICKS)
..chicken castanets, in the 'Carnival of the Animals', you're going to be listening out for some music that sounds like this.
(PETER PLAYS BOUNCY TUNE)
And when you hear that music, we can use our little chicken castanets to make a beat along with that music. So, when you hear "Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-bah, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-bah," I want us to use our castanets like this.
(CASTANET CLICKS)
Tac-tac-ba-ba-ba-ba-bah, Tac-tac-ba-ba-ba-ba-bah, ba-ba-bah, ba-ba-bah. So, if we practise together. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. A little bit like that. Should we practise together? One, two, three, four.
(PETER PLAYS BOUNCY TUNE)
And then you might hear it a little bit different, like this.
(PETER PLAYS TUNE AT LOWER PITCH)
These really strange sounds that's meant to sound like a chicken. So, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-bah, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-bah! Yeah, fantastic. I think we can do that really well. So, I'm going to hand over to my good friend Paul and he's going to show you how to make one of my favourite instruments, the fossil shakers.
(SHAKER RATTLES)
It's great to see you guys! Here you go, Paul.
Paul Zabrowarny: Thanks, Peter. Hi, everyone. My name is Paul. And today I'm going to talk to you about making a fossil shaker. But first I wanna talk to you about my cello. So I'll be playing the cello in the 'Carnival of the Animals' today. And this is my instrument. As you'll see, it's quite similar to Peter's violin but it's a lot bigger. And because it's bigger, it makes a lower sound. So, when I pull my bow across the string, you'll hear it's a really low, beautiful sound.
(PAUL PLAYS DEEP NOTES)
And that's my cello. So, to make a fossil shaker. First, I'll show you one that I've already made. My first fossil shaker looks like this. So, I've actually made a butterfly fossil shaker for my first one. And when you shake it...
(SHAKER RATTLES)
..it makes a sound like that - a great sound. OK, so to make a shaker, you will need a roll, some paper, some masking tape, and some rice or some pasta. OK. So, to get started, I have my roll and I've cut a piece of paper that fits around the roll. You can use paper that you'll colour in or you can use wrapping paper if you have wrapping paper at home. Either way. You can make it look however you like. So, I'll get some sticky tape...and tape that...onto the roll, like that so it's nicely covered. OK. Then I need to seal one end so the rice doesn't fall out. So I put... I've found it takes three pieces of masking tape to do it well. So, one across there. And then two the other way. One there like that. And then...one there like that. Now we get the fun bit - or the messy bit, depending on how you go. You can fill it with rice or pasta. But you don't need to fill it much, because you want room to shake in there. So, you don't want to fill the whole tube, OK?
(RICE RATTLES)
That's about enough. I've used rice today, but there's many options, as Mel will show you in the next video. OK, so then to stop it from coming out, you seal the other end - again, three pieces of masking tape is fine. One. Two. And three. OK, it's time to give our first test shake and see if we have any leaks. OK, so let's have a go.
(SHAKER RATTLES)
Ah! Pretty good! OK, so for my shaker, for my fossil shaker, I could colour this in. I'm not going to, 'cause it'll take a lot of time. So I'm just going to cover it with some awesome...dinosaur stickers so it can be a real fossil shaker. So I just put them wherever I like on the outside. Nice and scary places. Like this, maybe...one over here. I like to put one on the end as well to cover the masking tape. Like that. But you can make them look as fancy as you like. So that is my dinosaur fossil shaker.
Melissa Doecke: Well, thanks very much, Paul, for showing us how to make our dinosaur bone fossil shakers. Here's mine. I've got a flowery one with a little bit of green sparkly tape and also some silver shiny tape there. And it's all sealed up at the end. Let's hear it.
(SHAKER RATTLES)
Very shaker-like. Can I hear yours?
(SHAKER RATTLES)
Great! Lots of big sounds there out of your fossil shakers. Now, I'll let you in on a little secret. I've got something very special inside my fossil shaker and I'll bring them up right close here so you can see on the screen. I've got...dinosaur pasta. Can you see that? A little T-rex and a little brontosaurus. They're my secret little dinosaur pastas inside my fossil shaker. Now, we're going to get to use these in our Inventi 'Carnival of the Animals' show. There's a very special spot where you can use your shakers and join in the show, and we're going to have a listen to where that is now. So, I'm going to play a little bit of music for that part on my flute. Now, to introduce the flute, in case you haven't seen one before, it's lovely and shiny, a really long instrument, and it sounds like this.
(MELISSA PLAYS BRIGHT MELODY)
It's a very high-sounding instrument. And like the oboe that you would have heard Ben play, we use air and we blow into this little hole here and wiggle our fingers very fast on the keys here and that's how we make the sounds. Now, the flute in the story of 'Carnival of the Animals' actually plays the music for the bird. And you'll hear that when you watch the show. In this particular moment, though, when we go for our fossil shakers, there's a different type of music. So, here's what you will hear for the fossil music.
(MELISSA PLAYS PEPPY MELODY)
That's the tune for the fossil music where you get to use your fossil shakers. Now, we've got a very special thing that you can join in with when you watch the show, and if you can follow me and do the same rhythm like this...
(SHAKER RATTLES)
..that will fit really well with the music. So, we have da-da-da. Da-da-da. Da-da-da. Da-da-da. Now, that fits along with this flute music. Now, I'm going to play it on the flute and I'm going to try to do the shaking at the same time. See if you can join in with me.
(MELISSA PLAYS PEPPY MELODY)
Exactly. I can't play the whole tune and play my flute with the shakers, so you might have to do it for me. Let's have a go now. Ready?
(MELISSA PLAYS PEPPY MELODY)
Well done! I heard some very good fossil shaking then. That's a very good practice for you. So, when you see our 'Carnival of the Animals' video, you can join in at the spot with the fossils and do your shaking with your fossil shakers that you've made at home. That's wonderful. Now, we hope that you've enjoyed our Inventi Carnival Creations and we hope that you're able to watch our show online. You can find it via the Boroondara Arts site and it will be available from 29 September all the way through until Saturday, 3 October. So, please log on during that time and have a watch of our show. We're also going to have a live session with Inventi Ensemble musicians, the ones that you've seen today on this video. We're going to have a live session on 2 October at 11am where you get to meet us, talk and introduce the instruments, ask some questions and show us the wonderful creations that you might have made with your craft. So, please join us for that session as well. Thank you and enjoy the show.
(UPBEAT MUSIC)