How Cymbals Work

Video Transcript

"What are cymbals? Well, cymbals are the thing that really gives an attack to a track. Anytime there is a climactic part of the song; anytime there's something that needs little bit more amp, that's when you're hitting the cymbal. It creates a big crash, big noise, sounds fantastic. There are many kind of cymbals and they're all used for many different things. There's a high hat and what a high hat is, is it's a thing that keeps the rhythm. A high hat is a thing that keeps the tempo of the song. You're just constantly hitting it and that's all it's really for. It's just keeping the time. There's also right cymbals and crash cymbals. Right cymbals are big, big cymbals that aren't really for hitting and attacking but more for the same thing, keeping the rhythm, keeping the time, be giving it a little bit fuller sound. Crash cymbals which are usually the higher ones are the ones, like I said, they are for attack. They are the ones you hit at that climactic part and the ones that make that big crashing noise. The way to put together cymbals is actually very easy. There's only a few different parts. There's the stand, the cymbal itself and the two cushions. And what they're for is you take the two cushions on either sides of the cymbals so it doesn't rub friction on the metal. And what you do is you setup the stand and place the cymbal on top with the mat beneath and then one on top and then you screw it down to make sure it doesn't fly off when you're hitting them 'cause you're going to be hitting the cymbals pretty hard. So that's basically how cymbals are put together."