A special team-building: energy, cheerfulness, great results for great groups of people. Easier than classic musical team buildings, surprising, involving, fun.
1 Why Drums? Because life is rhythm
We have heard to our first sound into the womb of our mother, and it was rhythm: the beating of her heart. Rhythm is with us before we are born and every day marks moments of our life. That is way rhythmic sounds provokes immediate, deep emotions, inexplicable for somebody. It doesn’t matter how cold or controlled you might be, you won’t be able to resist beating with your foot our clapping basic rhythm with your hands.
2. Rhythm is in our primitive memory
The power of sound and music is recognized as therapeutic by science: it is energizing and relaxing at the same time. Rhythm does more: it creates positive pulsions, optimism, and cheerfulness, it encourages socialization and relationships; it makes us feel part of a group, no matter if small or great. Everything is such a short time: rhythmic takes just a few minutes to low our self-defenses and we are ready to get involved. That is because rhythm is part of ourselves.
3. Energy and cheerfulness team building
Different formats of team building exist, and they offer fun and unforgettable experiential training through the use of drums and percussions. Today they are increasingly required for business events and have brought a real revolution of joy and life energy into the broad category of musical team building. And since they do not take a long time they are ideal as an intermission, relax recharge moments.
4. Formats
These formats have quite complicated and funny names. Here some of the best known.
– Drum Circle
It is basically a jam session with drums and percussions. A leader guides the improvisation of the participants, allowing them to follow the rhythm and develop more and more engaging musicality through some simple techniques. It is like playing percussions within a circle at the park or on the beach, but with the help of a specialized guide that marks the different phases of construction of the ensemble, it comes into action during critical moments and increases the music quality. Not to forget the surprise and great satisfaction of the participants!
– Drum Orchestra
It is the most classic format. After a first phase “ice-breaker” the ensemble is divided into 4 musical sessions: low drums (African dun dun and surdi), hand-drums (djembé, congas, darbouka), bells & woods, shakers & voices. The conductor, assisted by his staff, gives a rhythm to each section and magically rhythm parts played together to create a beautiful ethnic song. It is a very rewarding format as it is the ideal to give a team the awareness of their own means ” we can do it.”
– Drum Stomp
It is the most whimsical and fascinating format because an orchestra is created by using waste materials or normal objects as garbage cans, working machinery, plastic bottles, brooms, chairs… everything can play music. Each participant builds his own musical instrument by using any sort of material, and during the warm-up a great and strange orchestra starts playing just to have fun. Then the group is divided into a maximum of 6 teams which have one hour to create a song and perform it in front of their colleagues. This format creates and healty competitions, and gives the chance to establish a final award ceremony, increasing the fun.
– Boomwhackers
It is the most rapid and intuitive format, ideal for large audiences. With interventions from 5 to 30 minutes (according to the requirements of the program), we create a high energy impact rhythmic orchestration using simple colored plastic tubes. Each color corresponds to a note and when you hit the pipe that makes ‘BOOM’ in its note. It is the ideal format for large number of events: in a very short time it makes everyone feel part of one big team.
5. Outcomes
Rhythmic exercise is really extraordinary to develop communicative, creative and leadership qualities within a group. Besides, if you mix the formats, each participant has the chance to try lots of instruments and play different roles within the ensemble. This underlines the importance of flexibility and openness to change, qualities more and more required within a company.
6. Practical advantages
Music, and rhythm in particularly is a team-building activity which offers lots of advantages. Here the main ones:
– large groups: up to 500 people with percussions and up to 1500 people with boom whackers.
– speed of executions: to get the maximum performance and the best results, activities with percussion should last at least two hours, but for recreational events a minimum of 45 minutes is fine. Boomwhackers obtaine appreciable results in a very short time: 5 to 30 minutes.
– indoor/outdoor: activity may be performed both inside and outside without renting extra-meeting spaces.
7. Universal language
Music and rhythm may involve easily people of different languages and cultures, as they do not need translations or cultural mediations. If you have foreign guests, these activities are ideal to overcome distances and smooth out differences. “Music is the easiest way to stay together in joy, peace, and harmony”. Pearl of wisdom from a great teacher of African percussion.
