Making a DIY Percussion Shaker
The finished product.
A shaker is a kind of percussive musical instrument which creates a short staccato or sustained legato sound by moving the instrument back and forth. Shakers create rhythm which adds to or fills out a musical piece. A shaker may contain rice, beans, seeds or other materials inside a dried gourd or plastic or metal cylinder to produce a sound. Think of the sound of rain or a rattlesnake. Percussionists use shakers in many genres but are featured prominently in Latin and African music. Sometimes a shaker is used on a rock or pop track to compliment the sound of the drummer’s hihat or ride cymbal, creating a sense of movement.
I have this kind of shaker made of seed pods which is available at most music stores. The sound is a woody rattle and works well as a plain old shaker or when placed on hi-hats and snares.
After seeing Upcycled Percussion a few years back, I started collecting all sorts of caps - from plastic bottle bottles, metal peanut butter jar caps, plastic orange juice cartons caps, beer bottle caps and more - to make my own DIY shaker. I filled a large box with my collection, bought the necessary glue and string and then promptly forgot about them for a few years.
Fast forward to earlier this month when I re-discovered my box of bottle caps and was inspired again to give this project a shot. I learned most of what I needed to know from Youtube DIY drum guru rdavidr:
Below are the tools and materials I used including:
Zap-A-Gap CA glue
Fast-acting CA glue activator
String
Tools.
Materials.
What I’m aiming for:
Nut shaker purchased at Guitar Center.
I used about 25 black metal/aluminum Joe Tea bottle caps for this shaker. First I cut off ten pieces of string and wrapped them together. I made a loop with the wrapped string, wrapped the end of the loop and glued the ends. I drilled holes in the caps and then fastened them to the string with knots. I wasn’t happy with how they looked so I used pliers to crush them a bit to resemble the nut shaker pictured above.
Work in progress.
How it came out:
DIY metal bottle cap shaker.
Not bad sounding! I like the metallic jangliness of it.
There’s a few things I’d change but I suppose I’ll get better with practice. The most difficult part was tying the knots which took some time.
Note: CA glue and/or activator is extremely flammable. I found this out the hard way when I used a lighter to stop the string from fraying and stuff caught on fire!
A few hours of work and I’ve got a neat little DIY percussion shaker. I’m looking forward to crafting more shakers with various types of caps that I can use for my musical projects.
Until next time,
Keith.
