Friday Fave: Boomwhackers & Black Eyed Peas

Today's "Friday Fave" comes to you courtesy of fellow music therapist Kat Fulton, who lives and works in San Diego.  I had the pleasure of meeting her at last year's AMTA Conference, and we've since stayed connected through Facebook and Twitter.  Kat is an expert drum circle facilitator and is truly an innovator when it comes to the use of percussion in music therapy, as you will see in a moment.

But first, are you familiar with boomwhackers?  These are plastic tubes that can be played either with a mallet or by "whacking" them against a hard surface.  They come in several different sets, including C Major Diatonic Scale, C Major Pentatonic Scale, a Chromatics set, and more.  You can see (and hear!) all of them here.

Boomwhackers might just have the silliest name of any instrument, but they  are quite possibly the most popular in my studio.  In one particular music therapy group, my young clients run for my boomwhacker basket every week and spend the first few minutes of our session playing them.

But now back to Kat, who wins the award for the coolest use of boomwhackers yet.  In this video, she plays the Black Eyed Peas song "I Gotta Feeling" using only - you guessed it - boomwhackers. Prepare to be impressed:



You can read more about why Kat made this video, and how she'll be using it, here. I was actually planning to feature this song in my upcoming "Sunday Singalong" video (showing how I teach my students to play it on the piano) but after seeing Kat's video?  No way - mine would pale in comparison!