What Are Musical Tubes (Boomwhackers)? A Shared Song with Ritmbox

Musical tubes, known internationally as Boomwhackers, are colourful plastic tubes that each sound a single note. Strike a tube against your palm, your knee or the floor and you hear its note; when every participant takes on one note, the group becomes a giant piano playing a song together.

In the video below you can see sessions where we combined musical tubes with the rhythm workshop in a single programme: the rhythm facilitator moving between the tables in a hotel hall, participants on their feet holding green tubes, and a finale with the whole room playing together.

What are Boomwhackers (musical tubes)?

Each tube has a different length, and the length sets the note: long tubes give low sounds, short tubes high ones. Colours are used to tell the notes apart, so even someone who cannot read music can come in at the right moment on a cue like "greens now". In our Musical Tubes workshop every participant becomes one key of a piano and we play beloved songs together. There is no room for error: when your note comes, you have to be there. That is exactly why it sparks concentration and team spirit so strongly.

How are musical tubes used?

1. Handout: participants are grouped by colour, and each group gets tubes of the same note.
2. Technique: hold the tube in the middle and tap it lightly against your palm, leg or the floor. No need to hit hard; it is loud enough already.
3. Cueing: the facilitator signals which colour plays when, by hand or with a colour sequence on screen.
4. Melody: first a simple scale, then the chorus of a familiar song is practised.
5. Finale: once the notes come together, the room plays the song from start to finish like a single instrument.

Why combine Ritmbox with musical tubes?

The Ritmbox Rhythm Workshop builds a strong rhythmic base in the room with percussion instruments; musical tubes add the melody on top. When the two are combined, participants do more than keep a beat: they play a familiar song that people actually recognise. One group carries the rhythm while the other carries the tune, and that division of labour makes teamwork audible.

The programme usually opens with rhythm to warm the group up, then the tubes are handed out, and it closes with a performance where both layers come together. Timing is planned around your programme; on their own, musical tubes run for 30 to 100 minutes and scale from 8 to 5000 people.

We describe the rhythm side of the workshop and its formats in detail in our corporate rhythm workshop guide. The main cost factors are the number of participants, the duration, the size of the instrument and tube set, sound system needs and the city.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you would like to close your meeting or convention with a shared song, contact us and we will plan the rhythm and melody layers around your group together.