When we put together our acoustic band, I immediately started looking for a way that I could bring some extra percussion to the table. One of the coolest gadgets I came across is my searches was a stomp box. There are many different flavors, but the one enduring concept is that it’s a block of wood with an acoustic guitar pickup mounted inside of it. This is thought of as foot percussion, which you’re supposed to tap on with your foot, but you can play it with your hands or sticks or whatever floats your boat. I realized rather quickly that this could be plugged into a trigger input on my old Alesis D4 drum module and used as a pad. So, for example, I could tap on this with my foot while playing guitar, and trigger a kick drum.
This stomp box is one of the cornerstones of my acoustic duo with Victoria Sadler, and makes it possible to pull off a lot of songs that we simply couldn’t do otherwise. I’m more than thrilled to have added this cool little gadget to my collection. Especially when you consider that back in the 1920s, Blues singers would stomp their foot on porch boards to add rhythm to their playing. I kinda like using something that’s a throwback to those days.
