Making a DIY Percussion Shaker

Putting those bottle caps to good use.

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. Shakers 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.

Demonstrating various types of shakers.

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.

© Upcycled Percussion

Fast forward to this month when I re-discovered them 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 aimed for:

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:

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.