Video: Diwali Box Zither

﻿Hello, everybody. My name's Christian, and welcome to today's lesson, and today's lesson is called Diwali Box Zither, where we will be making a box zither, an instrument using rubber bands and a cardboard box, and I will tell you more about that later. We are going to be making it, and we are going to be doing some listening exercises and movement, and also, we're going to be playing it on a backing track. So, when you are ready, let's begin. Okay, everybody, now it's time to start our lesson. Like I said before, today, we are going to be looking at a Diwali box zither. Now, Diwali, is an Indian festival of lights where there are lots of candles and lights, and lots of Indian music being played, so we're going to make our own. We're going to be making our Diwali box zither. We are going to be playing it, and playing along to a backing track. Now, parents and carers, you can support your little person by helping to make the instrument and also supporting playing along with the backing track, but first, we need to do a listening exercise. Okay, it's time to listen. So, we have two pieces of music here: one is some pop music, and the second one is some Indian music, and we're going to move our bodies along to the music and see if we can notice any differences in how we move. Let's listen to track number one. Ah, perfect. Don't want to play that twice. Okay. You'll notice that I moved along very rigidly in time with the music like that. I hope you did too at home. Okay, let's listen to track number two. Let's see if we can move slightly differently. Let's have a listen, and move along with me. Wow, you'll notice that I moved very differently to the first one 'cause there's no solid pulse in our Indian music. So remember, when we play our Indian music, we can move freely along with it. Okay, now it's time to make our box zither. Now it's time to gather our resources together to make our box zither, and for today's lesson, you will need two marker pens, the large ones; five or six rubber bands; and a shoebox. Now, for this video, I didn't use a shoebox. I had an empty package of tissues 'cause I just didn't have a shoebox lying around, but you do need a box that has a solid, flat top. Okay, so pause the video, gather all your resources together, and then we'll be ready to resume the video and make our box zither. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the "Let's Make" section of our video. So today, we're going to make a box zither, a Diwali box zither, and what you will need, hopefully, you've managed to get your resources together, but just in case you haven't, you will need a box. Now, I did say on the "Resources" section of the video that you will need a shoebox. Now, that's the best kind of box to use, but I didn't have one, so I've got an empty box of tissues. It'll still do the same thing. The most important thing is you use a box with a nice flat, solid surface. You'll need two marker pens, nice big-sized marker pens, and around six medium-sized elastic bands. If you're going to use a larger box, you'll need some larger elastic bands. So, let's begin. The first thing you need to do is take our box. And we are going to stretch our elastic bands one at a time over our box. Just like that. I start off in the middle and work our way out. So, one, here comes elastic band number two, and number three, oop, if I can do it, there we go. Take us halfway across the box. Now, let's work our way across the other side. Turn it around. Okay, elastic band number four, number five, I might need to scooch them out for a little bit so I can fit them all on. Let's just do some scooching. Ah, perfect. And elastic band number six. Okay, so, our elastic bands should be stretched nice and evenly across our box. The second thing we need to do is take one of our marker pens, and we're going to slide it underneath one side of our elastic bands. There we go. So, just leave two or three centimetres on the end. We're going to take our second marker pen, and do the same on the other side. So, we're going to scooch it up underneath. Here we go, and again, a similar amount of space on the end. It doesn't matter if it's exactly the same. Okay, and that is our Diwali box zither made, fantastic. Right. Next we need to see what it sounds like. Okay, everybody, now it's time to play our Diwali box zither, and the first part of this "Play" section is we're going to do two things. Okay, this, our marker pen and our second marker pen, these are called the bridge, and what we're going to do is we're going to use our finger to pluck the strings, but we're going to pluck in front of the bridge in this main, big section here and also behind the bridge, in this smaller section here. So, I'm going to do that now, and just have a listen to how it sounds different. Let's have a listen. In front of the bridge. Behind the bridge, they sound quite different. You have a go at home. You can pause the video and have as much time to play around and experiment as you like, and I'll see you in the next section of the video. Okay then, it's time to play the second section of our "Let's Play" section of our lesson. So we'll take our Diwali box zither. We've already had a go playing in front of the bridge and behind the bridge, and it sounds very interesting, but the next thing we need to do, is we're going to take our bridge, and we're going to slightly move them as we play, and we should hear some different sounds. So, here's the zither again without moving the bridge. Here we go. Fantastic, and here it is when I move the bridge. Have a listen and see how it's different. Ah, very interesting. The sound slides around a little bit like the pen. So again, you can pause your video and experiment playing by moving the bridge, and I'll see you for the next part. Okay, everyone, now it's time for the most exciting part of our lesson. It's time to play our box zither, and I have my completed box zither here. I have the bridge, using our marker pens; and I have the elastic bands stretched across them. Now, I'm going to play along to my backing track first, and I'm going to use all the different ways of playing an instrument. So, I might pluck the strings. I can move the bridge as I pluck the strings, and also, I can play behind the bridge. Fantastic. All right, I'm going to play the music, and I will play along to the backing track, and then, it's your turn. Here we go. Let's see if my music's playing. Okay. Fantastic. I really enjoyed that. Now, it's your turn. I'm going to play the backing track again, and you can play along to it. Here we go. I hope you're ready. It's time to play. Okay, I hope you had fun with that, and that brings us to the end of today's lesson, and a great big thank you for all the fantastic work that everybody's achieved today. I really enjoyed it, and I hope you did too. Now, if you would like to, you can share your work with Oak National, and ask a parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak. And again, thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you again for another lesson.

Completed: Diwali Box Zither

In this lesson we will learn how to make a Box Zither and perform some Indian music for the Diwali festival.

Creative Arts

Diwali Box Zither

Video

Lesson Complete