Stomp Pad is a thin, pliable e-textile sensor pad about the size of a computer mouse pad. It’s made from lightweight EVA foam covered with a conductive e-stripe polyester fabric. By wearing an elastic conductive sleeve over the sole of your shoe or sticking on one of the included rubber pads, you can tap your foot on it to: tap-the-beat, tap-on-tap-off loops or tap-and-hold loops via MIDI controller messages sent over a permanently connected 1-meter USB cable.
Connect Apple Camera Connection Kit and, with Apple Core MIDI devices running programs like IK Multimedia’s SampleTank or GarageBand, you have hands-free, basic operation of these iOS programs.
I tried out Stomp Pad with GarageBand on my iPhone 6 and was amazed at how sensitive and quickly it responds to gentle toe tapping. It is super-flexible and basically non-destructible—you could toss it on the floor or attach it to your guitar pedal board for controlling iOS guitar effects and amp simulations and then easily pack it away into your gig bag—it weighs nothing.
Perfect for solo musicians looking for a low profile method to trigger hands-free various rhythmic accompaniments. Superinteractive’s Stomp Pad is available from $149 MSRP.
superinteractive.com.au/stomp-pad
Barry Rudolph is a recording engineer/mixer who has worked on over 30 gold and platinum records. He has recorded and/or mixed Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hall & Oates, Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, the Corrs, and more. Barry has his own futuristic music mixing facility and loves teaching audio engineering at Musician’s Institute, Hollywood, CA. He is a lifetime Grammy-voting member of NARAS and a contributing editor for Mix Magazine. barryrudolph.com
