How to Play the Suspended Cymbals

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Lennon Leppert, and on behalf of Expert Village, this is part one of "How to Play Cymbals and Tam-Tam". The first cymbal we'll be talking about is the "sus" cymbal, or the suspended cymbal. It can be played in a variety of ways, in a lot of different situations. The first way is with mallets. These are yarn mallets, they're very responsive, and these are very hard, you can get varying hardness?s with yarn, they're easy to control and they give a nice sound. So first what you're going to do when you're rolling on a sus cymbal is you're going to start on the edges and warm it up a little bit, and then you can start your roll. And when you dampen it, you want to dampen it with both hands, and you can get an immediate stop. The next kind of mallet is a felt mallet; these are very soft felt mallets. I don't usually use these because yarn mallets are more responsive and they get louder, but if you do decide to use felt mallets this is what they sound like. You have to warm it up a little bit more than yarn mallets, and it takes a little bit longer to get to the top of the roll, but it is a smoother sound. The next way you might be asked to play a suspended cymbal is with a stick. There are two kinds of sticks that you might use, wood-tipped and nylon-tipped. The first ones I'll show you are wood-tipped. There are three different ways of playing a suspended cymbal with a stick, in the center of the cymbal, like a ride cymbal, on the bell, or as a normal crash. In orchestral music that's called upon a lot because it produces a different effect than crash cymbals, which I'll be demonstrating in the next part. And you'll usually choke it right away, and it will be or you can let it ring. The nylon tips get a different sound, but it's roughly the same sound, it's a little bit thinner. The last way you might be called upon to use the suspended cymbal is to scrape it. You can use a quarter, a key, anything metal or wood, anything that produces the kind of sound that you want. Usually the biggest obstacle is making it loud enough to go over everything. I like a quarter, it's kind of thick and it's easy to hold. You're going to start at the bell and work your way out, and usually let it ring. This concludes part one of "How to Play Cymbals and Gong"."