Transcript for the video "How I Made My Drumkit, Part5"

Note: this page includes very few pictures, watch the video for the complete story!

Hi my name is Marcel and I would like to share with you how I made my electronic drumkit and how you could be making your own electronic drum kit. This is part 5 of a 10 part series and in this video I would like to show you how I made my footpads. Footpads are basically drumpads that fit in a bassdrum pedal so you can play it with your feet.

This is the Footpad that I play today, as you can see I use four of them. Which sounds I play with each of them depends on the music I play. When I play pop or rock music this pedal here is mainly assigned a kick sound, this one on the other side is usually an open Hi-Hat sound and the others differ quite a lot.

In this video I would like to show you a few old models and after that I will show you my current model. Let’s go the the workbench.

I started in the late 80’s. Back then, most bassdrum pads were placed vertical. They looked like ordinary pads with two pipes to keep it standing up. I felt it would be easier and cheaper to make a pad that could be used horizontally. In order to make good contact, I made my own beater & rod, it looked like this:

It worked fine, but it looked a bit... silly.

After that I made several new footpads using PVC and steel profiles, in angles of 90 degrees. That worked fine as well but that required to bend the rod for the player to make a good contact with the footpad. That worked fine for me personally, but I did not feel that was a good design to sell to customers.

In the late 90’s I made an oval shaped footpad and that is what I still use today. It consists of two metal parts, that I had powdercoacted in black. The lower part is bend in 47 degrees, which fits most bassdrum pedals. If you look at it closely, the design is pretty much the same as the drumpad I showed you in part 4. From top to bottom you see a piece of rubber as a playing surface, a top plate, a foam layer and a bottom part for mounting. The trigger obviously goes beneath the top plate. The main differences are that the shape and material of the plate and bottom parts are different. Also, I made these parts out of metal instead of plastic, because it needs to withstand much bigger forces compared to pads being played with a drumstick.

Unfortunatelty I do not have enough parts to construct a new one today. But here I have a footpad of which the foam is damaged, so I want to replace it. Let's tear it open. Now, if you have seen parts 2 and 4 of this series, there are no surprises. You can clearly see the piezo attached underneath the plate and you can see that the cable is attached to the piezo at one side and to the connector at the other side.

Because the design is practicly the same as the drumpad, I don’t think I need to go into details on what parts and tools you need. Aside from the obvious difference in material and size, there is also a difference in the order in which it is assembled. Although the cable could go around the bottom part, I prefer to have the cable go through a hole in the bottom part. That means I need to put the cable through before I solder the trigger.

So this Footpad now needs a new foam layer. I do not need to disassemble the whole thing. Here I have a piece of foam prepared, what I need to do is I need to cut the foam in the middle. Then I can wrap it around the top plate like this. So what remains now is that I need to glue it together. For that I use TIX glue, like i have shown you in the previous video. So this footpad is not broken, this is an example of maintenance. When you make pads yourself, chances are that you need to do some maintenance now and then.

Now to mount the footpad in your bassdrum pedal, you might need a few pieces of rubber. Depending on the position of the beater when it makes contact, you might want to add these pieces above or below. The most important thing: you need to make sure that the beater is pressing the surface exactly in the middle. If it isn't aligned, it will not press evenly. In a few months time the foam will tear, just like it did in the footpad you just saw. So make sure it is aligned, in both directions.

Also you need to set the angle of the beater and rod. In my experience the rod should be about horizontal when no pressure is applied. Don’t go bending the rod now, most pedals nowadays can be adjusted down by the axis easily. This reminds me that I need to give you two tips, for when you’re going to buy a new bassdrum pedal. First, you need to check whether the angle of the beater and rod can be adjusted, like with this pedal. Second, I recommend a pedal with a plate underneath. Most pedals will do, but check these two things before you buy a new pedal!

Just like in the previous videos about cymbals and pads, I like to show you some other designs, just to trigger your imagination. Remember the first footpad I showed you in this video? That looked pretty easy, didn’t it? I have an even simpler design here. This consists of two small plates of PVC and some foam inbetween. In fact it is pretty much one zone of the multipad I have shown in the previous video. As always the piezo is beneath the top plate. There is a downside however, compared to a footpad that you play with a bassdrum pedal, it's more difficult to play fast patters. Try it and you will find out what I mean.

If you want to play electronic drums, you need to have a hi-hat. In electronic drumkits, the hi-hat is a somewhat complicated component. All components of a drumkit function individually, the hi-hat is a combination of two components. In an electronic drumkit the common practise is to use a common drumpad plus a footswitch or pedal to be played with your foot. What is appropriate, depends on the drummodule.

On your module, there usually is one pad input that has the label hi-hat. Most modules also have an input for either a footswitch or a pedal, that input may be called Hi-Hat control. They work together, which means that the sound you will hear when you play the pad, depends on whether the footswitch or pedal is pressed or not. You should hear a ‘closed’ hi-hat sound when the footswitch is pressed and an ‘open’ hi-hat sound when it is not pressed. Also, when you press the footswitch without hitting the pad, you should hear a third sound: a ‘closing’ sound. Some modules even have a ‘fourth’ sound, if you press and release the pedal quickly.

With most drummodules you can use a footswitch to open and close the hit-hat. Here you see an example of a footswitch I have used often. I have often used doublesided tape to attach the footswitch on a floor. You could also use velcro if you have a carpet underneath. If you need to buy a footswitch, don’t buy an on/off switch, but a 'momentary' footswitch.

If you want to be creative, you could make a footswitch yourself. What you need is a small electronic switch like this one and mount it beneath a bassdrum pedal like in this picture. The advantage is that a kick pedal is much tougher then the average footswitch you can buy. For those that are looking very closely at this picture, I have a dog that has blonde hairs. So those are not mine in case you noticed. Well... now you have noticed I guess.

Also, you could combine the switch with a footpad. With two pedals and two footpads and one switch, you have three functions for two feet. Using multiple setups on your drummodule, you could alternate functions.

When using a footswitch, the hi-hat can either be ‘open’ or ‘closed’. If you own a module that works with a special hi-hat pedal, connecting such a pedal might offer you more ‘inbetween’ sounds. If you really want a realistic hi-hat, check the features of several drummodules before you buy one. A wellknown example of a hi-hat pedal is the Roland FD-7. Basically it has a pressure sensor on the inside, that can measure how far down you have pushed the pedal. Great design in theory, whether you like this pedal or not, that is personal.

I have been playing Alesis modules for over 20 years. Since drummodules like the D4 only work with footswitches, I haven’t played with this pedal at all. Instead, I developed another way of playing hi-hat sounds: I use multiple pads. I have one or two drumpads for the closed hi-hat sound, a footpad for the ‘open’ hi-hat sound and another pad for the half open hi-hat sound.

I will show how I play hi-hat sounds in an separate video, that I plan to make in the future.

That’s it for part 5, in this video I showed you how I made my footpads. By now I have shown you how to make triggers, cymbals, pads and footpads. But you will also need to build a rack to mount all these things on. That is the topic of the next video. I hope you stay tuned!

Click here for the transcript of the next video in this series