Colourful melodies

Making and organising sounds to compose a simple musical composition

Student music resource developed by The Arts Unit

Years 1 to 6 music

What will I learn?

You will:

discover how a water xylophone works
create your own rainbow water xylophone
experiment with making and organising musical sounds
compose your own musical piece.

Welcome to the class

Duration: 00:20

Video full screen - Welcome to the class
Video transcript - Welcome to the class

Before you begin

Today you are going to make your very own rainbow water xylophone!

You'll need:

6 glasses or glass jars (all roughly the same size)
2 spoons (wooden and metal for different sound quality)
a jug of water
food colouring in red, yellow and blue – you could mix to make the rainbow. (Don't worry if you haven't got any food colouring, your xylophone will still work!)
a phone or camera to record your composition.

Discover

Red musical note character saying 'In music, the pitch of a note means how high or low a note is!' and holding a thumbs up.

Sound waves are vibrations that travel through a medium, in our case, water. When you change the amount of water in your glasses, you also change the sound waves.

Each of your glasses will have a different sound when you tap your spoon.

When you hit the glass with your spoon, the glass filled with the most water will have the lowest sound (or, in musical terms, pitch) and the glass with the least amount of water will have the highest sound (or pitch).

2. Watch

Watch this video.

Let's watch the rainbow water glockenspiel being played – it is very similar to our rainbow water xylophone.

Water glockenspiel

Duration: 02:59

Video full screen - Water glockenspiel
Video transcript - Water glockenspiel

3. Experiment

Follow these instructions to create your own rainbow water xylophone.

Using a jug of water, add water to the glasses or jars. Measure the amount of water you put in each cup, varying the amount.
Using the spoon, tap the glass to experiment with sound to create a different pitch for each one. Try to get 6 different sounds.

Remember, the more water, the lower the pitch. The less water, the higher the pitch.

Listen carefully to the different pitches created with different amounts of water in each glass. Did you get 6 different sounds?
Change the water amounts in the glasses until you are happy with the 6 different sounds.
Arrange your sounds from lowest pitch to highest pitch.
Add food colouring to the water.

Tip: One drop of food colouring is all that is needed to colour the water. When mixing colours, try one drop each of two colours. You can also try adding a drop of food colouring and not stirring the water.