Who knew that a kid could make beautiful music from empty coffee cans, shoeboxes, plastic water bottles and cardboard tubes?
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The students at Donegal Springs Elementary School in Mount Joy have done just that, thanks to a local composer who recently spent time at the school as an artist-in-residence.
Classical composer Tina Davidson of Marietta helped the students, in second through fifth grades, make instruments out of recycled materials.
She didn't help them too much, though. She and music teacher Lisa Houser gave them the stuff, offered a few guidelines and then let them have at it.
The result? Some very creative and colorful instruments not likely to be found in your typical school or community orchestra.
In addition to interacting with the younger students during May, Davidson has been working with the school's fifth-graders once a week for 10 weeks. Her efforts were funded by a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.
As a result, those 96 students have become both instrument-makers and composers. On Thursday evening at 7, the fifth-graders will present a concert featuring 30 original compositions played on their recycled instruments, with some regular percussion instruments added in. The concert is free and open to the public.
Third- and fourth-grade classes had their turn at instrument-making last Friday, eagerly entering the large-group instruction room where a shelf full of recyclables and a table full of decorations and noise-makers — beads, buttons, feathers, pipe cleaners, colored wire, bells, beans and rice — awaited them.
Each student could use up to three larger items — coffee and large vegetable cans (saved by cafeteria workers), aluminum pie pans, soda and water bottles, shoeboxes, cardboard tubes and the like.
Soon, thanks to hot glue and lots of rubber bands, all sorts of instruments began to take shape: guitars, drums, pie-pan shakers, maracas. Many made mallets by gluing large round beads onto sticks.
Fourth-grader Ziona Pearson created a shoebox guitar with rubber-band strings and some drums.
"I really like a guitar and I want a real one 'cause I think they're cool," she said.
Later in the morning, third-grader Colleen Pazumas crafted a heart-shaped guitar out of a heart-shaped metal lid and — of course — rubber bands. It resembles a guitar she saw on Guitar Hero.
Several students came up with some unique combination instruments. There was the shoebox guitar with mini Coke-can drums on the back constructed by third-grader Drew Stwalley. There also was a green Pringles can filled with rice with bell-tipped orange and pink pipe cleaners stuck in the lid.
What is it?
"I have no idea," answered third-grader Cheyenne Perry. Maybe a shaker with bells and a drum, she added.
Then there's the "drum shaker" fashioned by third-grader Molly Stoe.
Molly's instrument was a shoebox filled with rice and beans, on top of which was a small can (drum) and a water bottle (mallet holder). Attached to the box, accented with orange and green feathers, was a straw-and-pipe-cleaner contraption with bells.
Molly was quite pleased with her creation.
"I think I really like the mallet holder, which is really nice, and I really like the bells," she said.
She also liked something else about the project, besides getting to do "your own thing."
"It's nice because we're recycling and it's actually helping the earth," she added.
While this project is definitely a "green" one, agreed Houser, the music teacher, the idea is for students to gain a new appreciation for music.
"It seems to have really expanded their thinking as to what is music and what can I do with it," said Houser. "I don't have to be in the band or I don't have to be a great singer to make music."
Davidson, whose work has been performed by such groups as the National Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, has been helping children fashion music out of recycled instruments for many years.
"I found that if you get the kids to build an instrument, they'll want to write music for it, and when they write music, it's really the most creative thing you can do with music. It's something that they very rarely get to experience," Davidson said.
In encouraging students to compose, Davidson uses techniques such as journaling and drawing what music sounds like. Eventually, the students create their own musical notation, or language, using such symbols as lines, X's, O's and triangles.
"They have to sort of really figure out what their own symbols are," she noted.
When it comes to students who don't already play a regular instrument, "it makes it a very equal playing field," she said.
Davidson wants these students to learn not only about making music but also about "their own native creativity. They can trust their own creativity and use it. It's there for them, as a tool."
There is also the benefit of exposure to the arts.
"When the arts add to people's lives just like good food adds to people's lives, it makes them a better person. It makes them a stronger, healthier person" who is more interested in and connected to life, Davidson noted.
"We know that's what's going to really help the earth," Davidson added. "A lot of problems come up. We need a lot of creative solutions."
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