Rhythm Relay Game


They say necessity is the mother of invention. And this was certainly true this past Monday when my studio had it's July music theory Piano Party coming up on the schedule. I looked at the student RSVP's and noticed at least half of the group would be brand-new beginners with just a couple of lessons experience, half would be early intermediates, with a few late beginners thrown in. Choosing a game that would be engaging and level appropriate for all of them to play together was going to take some thinking. 

Rhythm review is always a good way to go for a multi-level activity. I flipped through the body percussion activities, rhythm cups etc that I had on hand and nothing was exactly what I wanted. But I did have a large stack of rhythm cups with various note values drawn on them for quarter, half and whole notes that I've used for a spin off of this stacking game. Using those, I came up with my Rhythm Relay game. 

The object: 

  • Be the first team to collect rhythm cups in the right order to represent a given rhythm. 

The set-up: 

  • Divide students into groups of 3 or 4. I planned to have at least one early intermediate and at least one brand-new beginner per group for my party. The early intermediate student would be given the role of team leader, and encouraged to help make sure the younger kids were understanding, thus making good use of the philosophy that 'best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else'. 
  • Teams line up at a starting line. Set up a table some yards away from the starting line with the various rhythm cups spread out on it on. 
How to play: 
  1. At the starting line, the teacher claps a simple 1 or 2 measure rhythm while counting out the beats. The students clap it back. We draw out how it looks on a white board and clap it all together one more time. 
  2. The race begins when the teacher says 'Go!'. Each team sends their first student racing to the table to grab the correctly marked cup to start the rhythm. Once they have found it they run back to their team, and set the cup into place to start setting out the rhythm.
  3. Once they've placed the cup, the next team member can run to get the next cup for the rhythm. They continue the relay until the whole rhythm has been collected. 
  4. The first team to represent the rhythm correctly through their collected cups, wins the round. 
Variations: 
  • It doesn't have to be cups. You can use anything you've got with note values on them. Cards, blocks, legos, etc. 
  • If you have a majority of more experienced students, maybe skip drawing out the rhythm and make that part of the challenge. You could also consider adding rests for a more experienced group of students.
I didn't manage to take any photos or videos of the game in action, but it was a hit with my group of students. The early intermediates did a wonderful job including their younger team members and making sure they understood the rhythm. The students were engaged and excited, and it ended up being a great group activity to get all of them working on rhythm together. I could see this being really useful at music themed summer camps or as ice breakers at larger group lessons like my studio's Piano Parties.