Playing the Ride & Wash Areas of a Drum Kit

Video Transcript

"JOEL SIEGEL: You may have noticed that I was playing in a consistent spot on the cymbal for all four of those grips and all those strokes. This is kind of your sweet spot if you're trying to get that sustained ride sound. Now, the ride gets to sustain the cymbal so you get all those colors and overtones but you're also getting definition of the cymbal as this is basically your time-keeping quality. So just to illustrate again, you can hear that it's giving that sustained sound underneath but also giving you time. Another area you can hit the cymbal in--and this is the probably the other most common use of the cymbal--is the wash area. This is towards the edge of the cymbal. This is where basically the metal--the resonance of the metal, the wave form starts to interfere with each other and you start to get a lot of sound because of that interference in all those waves interacting with each other. You can't hit with the beat on top of the cymbal. This is not really a very common application, but again if the sound calls for it, you make the call. You can hear there's a lot of wash there. This is how it's more commonly played which is with the side of the stick against the side of the cymbal."