Drum kit

(Note for readers: for some reason Blogger appears not to 'see' capital zs - so excuse the lowercase where it should be uppercase below - if anyone knows a fix to this problem, do share!)

I was vaguely aware of the launch of zingzillas, but I don't really like the 'people dressed up' style of childrens' programme. It was probably for that reason that I glossed over it until relatively recently. "Oh, people dressed up as monkeys pretending to play in a band, yawn..." said my brain. How wrong was my brain! The characters are growing on me, but the format of the programme looks at a different style or aspect of music (and sometimes associated dance) each week, and it's actually quite interesting. My 1 year old loves it - and there are few more hilarious things than watching a 1 year old dance. I'll put zingzillas on, he watches it, I watch him...

As musical introductions go, I'm much more a fan of that than Space Pirates. I chanced across that briefly a couple of weeks back. The gist is that some kids ask for music based on a theme (e.g. 'holiday'), and the Space Pirates find and play them three tracks; one a 'classic' music video, one a live performance and one a pop-song interpreted by spacerat-puppets. But I never needed to see this again, where I least expected it, lurking inside an apparently innocent kids' programme:

My ears! My ears!! Get back on the Vengabus, you Euro-pop-manglers!

Continuing the musical/ear-punishment theme, I 'made' BabyBoy a drum kit, very loosely based on Tang's from zingzillas. It's approximated as best one can when one's working in the medium of rubbish... 'Made' sounds rather grand when it basically involved collecting tubs and kidding yourself that you needed more Betty Crocker icing. He loves it though, and the sound is not bad... Certainly quieter than the real thing, which is a plus in my book!

The drum-sticks were more properly 'made', to please my husband's paranoia of eye-putting-out, and have taken a fair amount of battering well. They are firm enough to get a decent "whack" but not so pointy as pencils or whatever else might work for impromptu purposes.

Take:
Tubs of various sizes
Some newspaper
Sellotape

For the drums, clean and arrange tubs... Er, that's it.
For the drumsticks, take two sheets of newspaper and roll them diagonally to form a long tube.
Twist the tube in on itself to make a stronger 'pole'
Bind pole tightly in sellotape.
Chop pole in two and tidy the ends. (I also wondered about 'frilling' the end of the newspaper before binding in sellotape, so you could create a 'sweeper' brush for the drum, but I haven't as yet got round to it.)