Whacky Wish

For this seasonal Boomwhacker® piece we have combined Boomwhackers®, singers, dobro, banjo, acoustic bass, jingle bells, and a calliope... what could be whackier than that! The song tells the story of how a young person is walking along and happens to meet a stranger with long white whiskers and eight reindeer. This young person proceeds to tell the stranger about a pretty "whacky" wish. You might consider doing a little pantomime to act out the story as it's told. There are even sound effects to go along with the items in the wish (polka dots, pixels, and a backwards day). Also, even though the lyrics do say "Oh, one Christmas I was walking..." if you need to, you could easily change "Christmas" to "winter" or "evening."

This song also has a clapping part at the beginning and during the chorus at measure 25. Since the clapping starts at the beginning, we have six counts of jingle bells that lead up to the two pick-up notes. That will help get a tempo established for your clappers.

As far as the Boomwhackers® go, the song is written for the Diatonic Boomwhackers® set, and it uses every note in the scale. If you have Bass Boomwhackers® you could double the part if you'd like. At measure 17 you could have the option of playing chords on beat one or going up and down the scale. If your Boomwhacker® players can master doing the scale, it will make for a really neat effect in a performance - especially if they can really exaggerate the movement of striking the Boomwhacker® and then sharply bringing it back up. Whatever you choose to do, be sure to be whacky and have fun.