We tested conductive paint with Rishii recently and the idea of drawing touch data from drums look really promising.

The conductive paint was painted onto fabric and an old set of bongo’s.  the key thing about connecting to a drum was how to fit electrodes that could connect  to the arduino board. I attached some bits of wire using the conductive paint but found that it did not adhere very well and broke off after some use.  With the fabric it is much simpler to connect to the board as one simply needs to pinch the fabric and connect a crocodile clip. the disadvantage of using fabric is that it dulls the sound of the drum when played.

We tested to see if the application of talcum powder on the hands affected the sensitivity of the paint.

The next steps:

• We need to look at using other conductive materials such as copper tape or conductive thread.
• I’m hoping to work with rishii to better understand which parts of the drum he uses – which areas are his hands constantly in contact with and which are the areas of ‘attack’.
• we need to create a patch that reacts differently when two different connectors are touched