Improvise by exploring different sounds and creating repeated musical patterns or phrases

Ask learners to explore different ways of making musical sounds to realise the potential of percussion instruments. Discuss the variety of sounds.

Encourage learners to improvise rhythms when leading copycat games, e.g. ‘Don’t play this one back’.

In whole-class or group teaching contexts, ask learners to play ‘whatever they want’ for 10 seconds at the start of a lesson. As well as encouraging creativity, this can provide a useful opportunity for the teacher to assess skills and technique.

Engage learners in a ‘plug the gap’ activity: in a whole-class or small-group situation, everyone claps a pattern for 4 beats and then leaves a 4-beat gap for learners to take turns in improvising using their current instrument.

On the drum kit, demonstrate and discuss the rules of basic fills, i.e. playing in time, playing in the style, playing for the required length of time. Ask learners to:

• discuss the rhythm patterns/notes available to them at this level
• make up short and simple rhythmic patterns from suggested musical starting points, e.g. rock rhythms/grooves, fills.
• repeat the process, selecting and discarding ideas and aiming for musical coherence, e.g. changing the bass drum or snare drum patterns in a rock rhythm/groove
• discuss the musical effect of the improvisation
• record and play back the improvised pieces to help discuss their effectiveness

In whole-class Latin American percussion sessions, develop traditional question and answer ‘calls’, where learners play an answer in unison to the teacher’s call.