Boomwhacker colours

From a hummed tune to a colour row

A child hums the start of a song into a phone or tablet for six seconds; "mmm" works better than words. The page reads the notes, puts them on the eight tubes and shows up to 16 colour tiles. Tap "Play it" and the row sounds while each tile lights up on its note: whoever holds that colour plays. No microphone? "Try an example" hums the start of a German children's song, "Alle meine Entchen".

Handing out the tubes

Seat the children who share a colour together, so handing out and collecting goes quickly. Anyone without a tube sings their colour or claps the beat. Before you start, tap the eight tubes at the top so every child hears their note. Few tunes need all eight: "Hot Cross Buns" uses three colours, "Mary Had a Little Lamb" four.

Reading the row

Left to right, like a sentence. Two of the same colour in a row means play twice. Start on "Slow", then "Medium", and "Fast" once everyone's got it. "Show it big" fills the screen for the projector or whiteboard; tap beside the tiles to close it.

Why every tune lands in C major

The standard set has only the eight notes from middle C to the C above, the white keys of a piano. A hummed tune can be in any key, so the page finds the shift that puts most of its notes on those eight tubes and moves the whole tune by it. It sounds a little higher or lower than you hummed it, but it's the same tune. A note still between two tubes goes to the nearer one, so the page never needs the sharps and flats.

For parents and teachers

The page only listens when someone taps, and only for six seconds. The tune is read in the browser and forgotten right away: no recording, no account, nothing is sent. There's no score and no comparing children. More about Brumm Kids and ideas for music lessons in primary school.

What colour is the G Boomwhacker?

Dark green, a bluish green that sits between the light green F and the purple A. Catalogues name it differently because the colour names aren't standardised and the maker publishes no colour codes: West Music calls G aqua, Soundslice teal, the Australian Fun Music Company dark green. The same goes for A (purple, violet or indigo) and B (pink, magenta or fuchsia). It is always the same tube, and every tube has its note name printed on it. In solfège the eight run do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do, red to red.

The order is the rainbow's: red, orange, yellow, two greens, purple, pink, one step per note, and then red again. Every C is red, long tube or short, every G dark green, so the colour gives the note name and the length gives the octave. Each sharp takes the colour between its neighbours: G sharp sits between dark green and purple, and it is blue.

Boomwhacker colours, chromatic: all 13 tubes

The diatonic and chromatic sets together, every note of the octave, in equal temperament from A4 = 440 Hz. Catalogues such as West Music label the set C1 to C2; that is the tube's place in the range, and the notes sound C4 (middle C) to C5.

Boomwhacker colour hex codes

There are no official ones: Rhythm Band Instruments, who make Boomwhackers, publish no screen colours for the plastic. For your own worksheets, these are the values this page uses: C #e63a2e, D #ff8a1f, E #ffd91f, F #9be03a, G #1f9e4a, A #7b3fc4, B #e9409a. For the sharps we suggest C♯ #f3622a, D♯ #ffb21f, F♯ #5dbf42, G♯ #2f6fd6, A♯ #b25ad8, and print the note name on every chip.

How to play Boomwhackers properly

Hold the tube near one end without covering the opening: half covered it sounds muffled, fully covered it drops an octave, like a cap. Strike with the other end, loosely, on something soft. The note comes from the air inside the tube: a relaxed hit rings, a hard one sounds like plastic and, over a term, dents the tube, and a dented tube stops sounding clean.

• Into the palm: the standard classroom method, seated, quiet and easy to control. If the hand hurts, the hit was too hard.
• On the thigh: standing, good for songs with movement.
• On the carpet: for the youngest, sitting in a circle. The gentlest version keeps one end on the floor and swings the tube down flat like a lever; it can't bend that way.
• On a padded chair back: for performances, a row of children standing behind the chairs.
• Not on hard floors, table edges or radiators, and never on another child.

Three rules before the first tube leaves the box, repeated every lesson: a Boomwhacker is an instrument, not a sword. We play gently; a good sound beats a loud one. On the stop signal, the tube rests on your lap or on the floor.

Store them standing in a tub or hanging by colour, never squashed in a box: a bent tube no longer sounds its note.

Are Boomwhackers loud?

One tube played into the palm is about as loud as a clap. Twenty-five children hitting as hard as they can at once is very loud, and that is the usual first lesson. Practise soft and loud with the class as a game, and stop the playing with a signal everyone knows before you need it.

What age are Boomwhackers for?

Retailers list them from three years. In nursery or Reception, one colour per child is plenty and two colours already make a song: red and dark green, C and G together on every beat, a drone that fits under many children's songs in C, "Frère Jacques" among them. From Year 1 children read colour rows like the ones above; in Years 3 and 4 they play chords and move on to coloured noteheads. Adults use them too, for team days and drum circles. The hum-and-play tool at the top is made for ages six to ten. For the youngest, see music games for kindergarten.

How many for a class? Most songs use four to six colours. With 25 to 30 children that is five or six children per colour, so five or six diatonic sets if everyone plays at once. One set works too: eight children play, the rest sing, clap or conduct, and you swap after each go.

Boomwhacker games

1. Colour call: hold up a colour or tap its tube at the top of the page; only that colour plays. Then faster, then two colours at once.
2. The staircase: eight children stand in order from C to high C and play the scale up and down. Then everyone closes their eyes, two of them swap places, and the class listens for where it goes wrong.
3. Echo: you play a short rhythm on one tube, everyone plays it back. More in the rhythm games.
4. Question and answer: two groups; one plays four beats, the other answers with four of its own.
5. Drone: red and dark green keep the beat together while everyone else sings a song over it.
6. Black keys only: the five tubes of the chromatic set make a pentatonic scale, like the black keys of a piano. Anything the children invent with them fits together.
7. Your own tune: one child hums into the phone at the top, the class plays it back in colours.

Easy Boomwhacker songs and play-alongs

A play-along is a video or slide where each colour lights up or bounces as it is due, and whoever holds that colour plays. The songs to start with all fit the eight tubes of one diatonic set, from the fewest colours up:

• Hot Cross Buns: three colours, E D C (yellow, orange, red). The row is above.
• Mary Had a Little Lamb: four, C D E G.
• Ode to Joy (the first two lines) and the chorus of Jingle Bells: five, C to G.
• Twinkle, Twinkle and London Bridge: six, C to A.
• Row, Row, Row Your Boat: five plus the short high C.
• Frère Jacques: the whole round needs the low G of "ding, dang, dong": put an octave cap on the dark green tube.

For a play-along, hum the first line of any of them into the tool at the top (six seconds, up to 16 notes): "Play it" lights each tile in turn, one beat per note, at three speeds, and "Show it big" puts it on the projector.

Accompanying songs with Boomwhacker chords

Most children's songs in C major need three chords: C, F and G. A chord is a group of colours that plays together for as long as it lasts, and one set covers all three; in G the D sits below instead of on top, which still sounds right.

"Frère Jacques" runs on the C chord alone, "Mary Had a Little Lamb" gets by with C and G, "Twinkle, Twinkle" needs C, F and G. Octave caps on the chord tubes put the chords under the tune instead of in the middle of it.

From colours to notation

Children find a colour faster than a note name, but the notes should arrive at some point. Put the colour row next to real notation for a while: coloured noteheads on the stave, colour and line position together. Notation software does it for you: Flat colours a whole score in Boomwhacker colours on its paid Power and Education plans, Soundslice does it free for any score you view (both as of October 2026). Colour stickers for glockenspiels, xylophones and chime bars let the class play the same row on everything.

If a child can't tell the colours apart

About one boy in twelve and one girl in 250 of European descent has red-green colour vision deficiency (Birch, 2012), so a class of 25 often has one child for whom red, light green and dark green look alike. Every tube carries its note name, and so does every tile here. Give that child a colour that stands out, yellow or purple, and always say the colour and the name together: "Yellow, that's E."

Where Boomwhackers come from, and how a tube makes its note

Craig Ramsell, in the United States, came up with them in the mid-1990s while cutting up cardboard tubes for recycling and noticing that different lengths rang at different pitches. The first plastic tubes came out in 1995; Rhythm Band Instruments in Texas makes them today. The name is the sound: boom, and whack.

The pitch is the air column inside, like a flute with no finger holes; the strike sets it ringing. That's why longer means lower. The short high C is a little under half the length of the long C: half the length, twice the frequency, 523 Hz instead of 262, one octave up. It would be exactly half if a bit of air at each open end didn't vibrate along. A cap closes one end; a tube closed at one end vibrates at twice the wavelength, so it sounds exactly an octave lower.

Which Boomwhacker sets to buy

• The 8-note diatonic set, middle C to the C above, the chart above: the one to start with; nearly every classroom song fits it. About $20 to $30 (West Music $19.99 on sale, list $29.95, October 2026).
• Octavator caps, eight to a pack: the whole set an octave lower, the cheapest way to bass notes.
• The 5-note chromatic set, C♯ D♯ F♯ G♯ A♯: for songs with sharps and flats; with the diatonic set, 13 tubes and every note of the octave. The maker sells it for $20.95 (October 2026).
• The bass diatonic set, 7 tubes, C to B an octave lower: a little over twice as long (the low C is about 50 inches), impressive and hard to store. $46.95 at West Music.
• The treble extension set, 7 tubes, D to the C an octave above high C: $15.95 at West Music.

Start with diatonic sets and caps; add the sharps and the bass when the songs ask for them.

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