Recess

Sounds Simple

When master’s student Marjorie Gere, Ed.M.’07, walks into the Winter Hill Community School in Somerville, Mass., every Monday for the weekly afterschool music program she created, she doesn’t have to lug in guitars and saxophones. All of Gere’s instruments — rubber bands, fishing wire, empty milk jugs, and eggs — fit in her backpack.

“I thought it would be fun to explore sound through common household objects,” says Gere of the Musical Inventors Club. An accomplished musician who has been playing the violin since she was eight and teaching it since she was 16, Gere wanted to give the elementary-age students, many learning about music for the first time, something other than what she had. “I thought it would be great for students to be more creative in the beginning of learning music. In my own experience, learning was rote. It’s amazing I stuck with it.”

In addition to making the instruments, Gere also teaches them the science behind the sounds.

“I’ll set up various things and asked them to try to activate sounds, then we talk about how and why the sounds are happening,” she says. “Like blowing into a bottle or rubbing the rim of a wineglass.”

One of the simplest projects involved something the students were able to get out of the school cafeteria: drinking straws. Gere showed the students how to turn the straws into oboes with just a couple of holes cut in key places. In the photo above, the students (l to r) Nicole Monolo, Kaitlin Barnes, Gloria Sandoval, Jonathan Claudino, Jetro Caldeira, and Yvenson Celestin show off their final creations, including Monolo’s Mystical Magic Oboe.

Gere says that although the students get rowdy at times, especially when the project involves rubber bands, she knows what they learn stays with them.

“Sometimes after a class, a student will come back and say, ‘My grandpa and I did that at home and a funny thing happened,’” Gere says. “Those are the best moments.”