It’s easier than you think to find a fun. educational activity for kids that blends music with environmental sustainability. If you and your family are looking for musical instruments that you find expensive to buy at stores, then homemade musical instruments are for you!
Musical instruments have been around since the dawn of civilization. Early musical instruments, such as French horn that is made of animal horn used to indicate hunting success or a drum in a religious event may have been utilized for rituals.
Cultures ultimately evolved the ability to compose and play tunes for entertaining purposes. Musical instruments have developed in response to new applications, trends, and technologies. Playing an instrument provides you with a sense of calm as well as physical learning experience. Making homemade instruments is typically less expensive than buying in a music gear shop.
Make the things you wish were real using these 15 homemade instruments that will definitely save your time and money.
So why not produce music with some handmade instruments that are both fun and inventive? Here are 15 DIY musical instruments that you cam create with your kids at home!
Guitar
If you cannot afford a real guitar, you can make one using the items found at home. Rubber bands, a stick, and an empty shoe box are required. Remove the shoe box’s cover and wrap your rubber bands around the box to function as the string’s arm.
Plucking the bands on the guitar allows you to play it. In case you and your family are interested in guitars and guitar-related DIY projects, you can make use of this easy and simple craft.
Xylophone
This beautiful xylophone that youngsters can play along to “Tonic Sol-fa” or Do Re Mi meets the bill if you got a real cravings for DIY crafts. You will need to travel to the home improvements The basic pipe xylophone is constructed using widely available materials, some of which you may already have around the corners of your home.
Expert Tip: You can make use of scraps of wood to make wood xylophone. It’s incredible what a paint can do to garbage. To keep paint on longer, use sponge or a felt-covered drumstick.
This is a wonderful exercise to do with friend of sibling: start them out with one glass and a rhythm at specific speed, then add another sound. You will be able to create your own homemade instruments and masterpiece in no time!
Kazoo
This wind instrument is one of simplest Homemade Instruments you can make at home. Kazoos are tiny, tube-shaped musical instruments. A tiny round aperture may be found at one end. The other end has been flattened.
Kazoos feature a third opening, which is generally on top. A thin membrane covers this hole, which vibrates as you play the kazoo. Fortunately, making one is not difficult, you can create a simple kazoo of toilet paper roll, comb or more sophisticated one out of wood.
Floppy Disc Percussion
If you are looking for a sound-by-vibration homemade instruments, you might as well consider making a percussion instrument. This craft is a contemporary interpretation of a Japanese rope and wood and wood instrument known as kokiriko or bin zasara.
Look for a paracord and floppy discs at your home instead of rope and wood. Although the sound is not exactly the same, it’s nevertheless entertaining to play with and puts to good use a tack of floppies we had hanging around our living room.
Tambourine
The tambourine is another type of percussion instrument that you can make at home. Singers frequently use a tambourine because it allows them to multi-task while keeping one hand free to handle the microphone.
The tambourine may be precisely what you need most for your kids’ acoustic performance if your are searching for a fun musical element. This DIY version is also quieter than the conventional version. This is one of the most common homemade instruments you should not miss out.
Paper Plate Banjo
Make a handmade banjo out of paper plates and rubber bands to indulge your children’s whims. Staple two sturdy paper plates together.
Allow the children to personalize the plates by using their favorite colors and stickers. Stick a paint stick to the rear of the plates and attach some beads on top. Stretch the elastic bands around the stacked plates to place your strings.
Didgeridoo
You can now create your own didgeridoo using plumbing pipe or even wrapping paper tubes!
Didgeridoo is an Australian Aboriginal people’s long wooden trumpet-like musical instrument made with hollow wooden branch with a beeswax mouthpiece that is used to play music.
To begin, collect books and/or online printouts of traditional aboriginal symbols. Next, easily remove the plastic end caps and any stickers from the mailing tubes before using them. Get your pallet ready.
Lastly, to make the decorations for your didgeridoos. paint the symbols and motifs on the mailing tubes and apply beeswax! Now. your homemade instruments digeridoo is ready!
Can Drums
Drums provide the beat to a song, making them an important part part of tempo. They are a fantastic guide whether you want to dance to the beat or sing along with the percussion. The good thing is. you can now make your own drum at home!
They can now be created using common household objects such as soup cans. Pringles containers or even a tabletop. They may be painted as what your kids desire to paint and they can have a joy exploring the many exciting beats they can produce with this single can! All you need us a drum stick to follow along with.
Water Pipe Trombone
Another fun home-made musical instrument to build is this one. All you need is hot and cold water pipes as well as plastic funnel to build the trombone. Always bear in mind that each musical instruments requires three mechanisms while developing or building it;
- Materials used produces vibration
- Materials act as an amplifier of sound waves and;
- Materials used has the mechanism to control pitch
Your trombone just requires pitch modulation and amplification devices, making it relatively simple and fun to create!
Homemade Harmonica
Harmonicas are intriguing because of their small size and unique sound, but how do they operate? If you look inside a harmonica, you’ll notice tiny strips of brass of various lengths vibrating as you breathe into the instrument.
Sounds fun right? You can now create one at home! You may create a similar effect by taping together different sized straws and blowing into the airways, alternatively, filling glasses with varying quantities of water and lightly dinging the rims with a spoon.
This easy-to-make harmonicas are fun to play and you can even adjust the pitch by moving the straws. The vibrating part of the rubber band is shorter when you move them closer together, thus the sound is louder. To obtain the lowest possible sound, slide the straws all the way to the edges which could produce pretty high sound.
Easter Egg Maracas
Home-made Maracas are a great Easter craft for your kids! These are pretty easy and handy and they also allow for enough creativity that people of all ages may enjoy while making them, they can be crafted using materials you can probably found at home or already have on hand.
Expert Tip: You can use popcorn kernels as a noisemaker, but you may be as creative as you like. Rice, as well as dry beans or anything else you have on mind, are other options. It’s also fascinating to explore and try as your favorite homemade instruments!
Spool Drums
When we have a kid’s birthday party, we always include a craft like homemade instruments activity to keep the kids occupied. It’s a great opportunity for the kids to be creative, and the project serves as a take-home favor. At a recent music-themed birthday celebration, we constructed these adorable spin drums! Here are the needed materials:
- Empty ribbon spools (around 3.25 inches)
- Paper Straws
- Decorative washi tape
- Card stock
- Ribbon or twine
- Wood beads
- Hot Glue gun or craft glue
Pringles Can Shaker
Pringles Can Shaker is among the easy choices for homemade instruments. Cover the outside of an empty Pringles container with paper or masking tape, leaving enough room for the lid to fit correctly. Then have the kids pain or draw bright colors around the exterior of the shaker and put on some foam shapes to make it seem especially unique.
Then, remove the cover and add a handful of dried beans or rice to the container, then replace the top and shake to enjoy! Different beans, grains and pulses produces different sounds, so build a set with a variety of fillings in each so your child may play with different sounds.
Rain Sticks
Creating homemade instruments is fun especially with this Rain Sticks! A piece of plastic tubing approximately 30cm long, tin foil, rice or dry beans, and tape are all you’ll need to construct a rain stick.
Tape one end of the tube, making sure there are no gaps, to get things started. Now. insert a piece of tin foil into the tubing that is the same length as the tube. Fill the tube halfway with rice, dried beans, or beads, then tape the other end sealed.
Kids may listen to the sound the filling makes against the tin foil by turning or shaking the stick 180 degrees.
Bottle Top Castanets
Let’s burst your creative juices by making this homemade instrument! To begin, use a hammer to flatten a couple of metal bottle caps (this first part is for adults only). After that, cut out two large rectangular pieces of cardboard and fold them in half to resemble a duck’s beak.
Then, using a dab of glue on the jagged edge of the bottle tops, position them on both inner sides of the cardboard, so that they will collide when the card is closed.
Allow the children to participate by painting the cardboard with paints, glitter, or sticks, as desired, and allowing it to dry. They may clap the castanets together to make unique rhythms, or they can play two at once with both hands if they’re feeling very inventive.
Mini Lid Banjo
Among the cutest homemade instruments is the Mini Lid Banjo! Because you’ll be utilizing elastic bands as strings, the tiny banjo functions similarly to the DIY guitars we discuss above.
To begin, take a jamjar lid and wrap it with four elastic bands. Use a mixture of thin and thick strings to create a variety of sounds when plucked. Next, use masking tape to attach the elastic bands in place, ensuring that they are evenly spaced. Now, take a craft stick or a repurposed ice cream stick and paint it in a variety of bright colors. Glue it on the back lid and set it aside to dry.
Expert Tip: You may add more intricacy by gluing sequins to the end of the stick to make it appear like tuning pegs. When everything is in place, strum your banjo and enjoy!
Conclusion
We don’t always need to buy musical instruments from stores! This way can really help you save your time, money and resources and can even help you recycle the materials at your home and turn them into something that really worth the try and effort!
If you like your children to be environmentally conscious, you may want to instill resourcefulness in your your children and also, impart the love of music to them while you’re at it! With the use of discarded materials, you will indeed make creative and fun homemade instruments!