A tale of two instruments

At the end of the last half term, Joel had to make a musical instrument.  This was homework; the instrument could be anything - but it needed to be ready for the last day of the half term, when they'd use them all for making a piece of music.  This Magnum opus was to sound like a rain storm...

We started work in plenty of time.  Joel had decided that he wanted to make a guitar.  I had found a tissue box, and the ubiquitous elastic bands.  It was all going so well...

There was nothing in the brief about making the instrument look beautiful.  But with the time available, I decided (yes reader, I brought this entirely on myself, Joel was not bothered either way) that decorating the tissue box would be a good idea.  We set to it, cutting and sticking an array of different coloured paper all over the box.  It was beautiful.  However, it had already set us on the road to disaster...

I'm quite practical - or so I like to think - especially 'for a girl'...  However, I had not foreseen the effect that the gluing would have of the structural integrity of the tissue box.  Once the box was dry, it had warped beyond all recognition.  Joel was not amused.  It looked (and more to the point, sounded) pretty rubbish - which to all intents and purposes is exactly what it was.  Our failure was only compounded by seeing one of Joel's friend's attempts at a guitar; complete with correctly shaped body, neck, frets - the whole caboodle.

There was nothing to be done; we had to make something else.

I found the mouth piece from a party blower, a cardboard tube and a plastic pot; and left Joel and his Daddy to assemble a 'clarinet'.  I was already feeling chastened by my previous attempt, and to be honest I knew that with minimal time to spare (the rain storm concert was the next day), the instrument was more likely to be structurally sound if built by the engineer in the family...  I restricted myself to cutting the desired lengths of sticky tape.

And thus Joel went to school the next morning with an instrument that he loved.  Not because it was pretty, but because it actually worked.  He later told me that there had been endless shakers, guitars, drums etc. but his had been the only wind instrument in the building...  At least I can claim to have been the brains behind the operation, and the best sticky tape dispenser in Warwickshire!