Helping To Understand Your Cymbals

It can be very daunting and confusing when you start out drumming when looking at full drum kits with different cymbals and drums coming out the wazoo! So here is a very brief introduction to some of the most popular cymbals used today.

First of all, we’ll go through the 3 most popular cymbals seen on most drum kits, The Hi-Hat, Crash and Ride cymbals. The Hi-Hat cymbal is the smaller of the 3 seen on virtually every drum kit and is made up of 2 pieces, a top and bottom piece, which can be controlled by a foot pedal, as well as being hit with a stick. Its usually found on the far left of a setup and is often the most used part of the drum kit, the ‘Tss Tss’ heard to must drum beats.

The next cymbal most frequently used is the Crash cymbal, which is exactly as its name suggests. It’s what most people would consider as the classic cymbal, and you frequently find more than one on a lot of drum kits. It’s usually hit at the end of fills of bars of music to extenuate the end or change in phrase giving that familiar ‘Crash’ sound.

The last cymbal I’ll mention in a bit of detail is the Ride Cymbal. This is usually the largest cymbal seen on most standard kits at the far rights, above the floor tom. Once again this cymbals name refers to how it plays and sounds, it is designed to ring for a sustained time after it has been hit, so ‘rides with the music’ if you will. It is often used in place of the hit-hat in some beats rhythms.

These 3 types are considered the core cymbals when playing the drums, but the list of other types and options is endless, including ‘crash/rides, splash, China and even types of gongs’ are favoured by some players. But I hope this small article gives you a slightly better understanding of the cymbal family.

We sell cymbals individually, so you can build up your own drum kit. Or we sell full kits, check out our range online or come into one of our stores and see for yourself the fantastic stock that we have.

Our staff are trained to a high level and can offer you friendly, expert advice.