Making Bone Clappers — Rhythm Bones You Clack

Bone clappers are two bones you clack together for rhythm — a concussion idiophone, and one of the oldest instruments of all. People kept the beat this way long before strings or pipes.

Pick two flat, gently curved rib bones of a similar size, already cleaned and degreased so they are hard and odour-free.

File and round every edge until the bones are smooth and comfortable to hold. Ask an adult to shorten them to about 15 cm if they are too long.

Make sure the bones are completely dry. Dry, dense bone rings with a bright, sharp click; damp bone sounds dull and flat.

Slip one bone between your first and middle finger, curve facing outward, and hold it still and firm against your finger.

Slip the second bone between your middle and ring finger so the two bones face each other with a small gap, this one held loosely so it can swing.

Flick your wrist so the loose bone swings and strikes the held one — a sharp, bright CLACK. Relax your grip until it rings cleanly.

Roll and snap your wrist for single clicks, doubles and fast rolls. A pair of bones in each hand lets you play twice the patterns.

Bone clappers are a concussion idiophone: an instrument that makes sound by its own solid body vibrating when two rigid pieces strike each other — no string, no skin, no reed, and no resonating tube. The bright click is the hard, dense bone ringing briefly at its own natural frequencies and then damping away quickly, which is why dry, well-cleaned bone (denser and stiffer) sounds sharper than damp bone, and why bigger, thicker bones click at a lower pitch. Held loosely so it can swing, one bone strikes the other and both ring together. This is the same family as claves, castanets, spoons, and the medieval and Irish 'bones', and it is the very oldest kind of music-making — clapping, stamping and striking objects for a beat came long before melody. Its cousins on Youblob are the shaken gourd rattle and the struck-skin frame drum: the rattle, the clapper and the drum are the three great ways to make a beat.