Bucket Toto | Printable Teaching Resource

About this resource

What's inside this resource

Need to connect with your kids with their pop music through general music? Involve them in bucket drumming with Toto's hit from the 1980s, "Africa"!

There are three all-color coded slides along with the form identifiers listed next to each phrase. Discuss form with the students and teach them (by rote) the rhythms on the powerpoint with the corresponding repeats (most are repeated 2 or 4 times). Then, apply it to drums!

All regular notation is to be played on the buckets (or drums, or ground, however you wish), and the X notation (with a down stem) are played as stick clicks above their head (or you could apply it to a tambourine or other auxiliary instrument)

Here's the track so you can play along...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWfY9GRe7SI

Have fun with this and let us know how it goes!

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

Maintain a notated percussion pulse across repeated figures
Track section changes through a multi-page song arrangement
Coordinate the final rhythmic cue with the written ending

Teaching tips

Rehearse each repeated rhythmic cell separately before connecting the full five-page form.
Mark the point where a section changes so performers enter the next pattern together.
Practise the final cue independently, then attach it to the preceding repeated figure.

Skills covered

Rhythm reading — performers follow note groupings and rests in a bucket part.
Form tracking — repeated sections and page transitions organize the arrangement.
Ensemble coordination — shared change and ending cues require aligned entries.