It was a rainy Friday, when our class started to build didgeridoos.

Didgeridoos are the Australian music instruments which make a really deep sound. The Aborigines play them at ceremonies, because its noise reminds them of their god, the rainbow snake and what they owe to her. The real didgeridoos are usually made from hollowed tree-trunks painted in dot and line style, which is typical for the Aboriginal art.

We built our didgeridoos from outlets, because hollowing tree-trunks might have been much work, isn´t it? When everyone has put the eight pieces of his or her didgeridoo together, we went on the playground, where we rough them with wire wool. We had to do that, because the undercoat can only hold on a rough surface. After that we wanted to spray the colour onto them. Many pupils looked out of the window at our class when some of us tested the sound of the didgeridoos. The noise was really loud and it was great fun to play the didgeridoo, even without a mouth piece. But then it started to rain and we had to go back in the basement. After a long shaking of paint tins we could spray the basic and the colour onto the didgeridoos. Now, they looked more natural (and not like wastepipes).

After that, we were able to paint them in the Aboriginals´ art style. Even if the many of us just draw anything, some of our didgeridoos looked like real Australian didgeridoos. But most of us hadn’t enough time to paint their didgeridoo up to the end, so we wanted to continue painting at Wednesday.

At Monday we tested the sound of our didgeridoos together at music lessons.
It is really difficult to make a sound on the didgeridoo. You have to make your lips vibrate, what doesn´t sound really difficult, but good didgeridoo players are able to play the didgeridoo for about five minutes without a pause. They breathe in through the nose and breathe out through the mouth the same time. It is really difficult to do that and nobody was able to do this technique after our first attempts.

At Wednesday, every didgeridoo was painted up to the end. The majority of them seems really cool and really Australian. Every didgeridoo looks different, and every of them is unique.

To sum up, we had much fun while we were painting, building and making our lips vibrate. In my opinion, it was a really good idea to have a cooperation between Music and English lessons.

By L.W.