Look Mum No Computer - Sam Battle

DIY Synth items can be easier than you think, This is an Art Attack style ‘how to’ about making a KRAFTWERK style Drum Pad out of tinfoil, batteries and a fair bit of gaffer tape.

In 10 minutes of gluing tinfoil to everything you have a very basic drum trigger which is in essence a glorified switch with the tin foil drum stick making contact with the pad, sending enough charge from the battery into the synth to trigger a sound. But you best make use of it quickly because chances are it won’t last long.

These pads should work with most synths/drum machines or whatever you have that have gate/trigger ins - a modular synth, maybe an ARTURIA MicroBrute or something similar like an KORG Odyssey or something.

You’ll need:

3 x AA batteries
tinfoil
gaffer tape, and the rest is up to you.

***Start with 3 batteries, if it isn’t triggering chances are there isn’t a good contact somewhere. If you’re sure of it, maybe put another battery in the row, but don’t go over 4 then you might be in sketchy breaky territory. The power they send out is pretty low because of the crappyness of tinfoil, so there won’t be any casualties.

If you’re a bit worried about that then put a 1k resistor between the positive side of the battery and the drum wire, but everything you’re plugging it into will have protection in case something goes wrong anyways. But don’t plug up too many batteries or you might start a synth fire, no one wants that.