First off, I'd like to say Hi to this community, I think that you're all great people and really know how to help people out. I've searched many drumline forums and most of them weren't really helpful, nor have people who know what they're talking about.

I play Cymbals on a High School line, entering my 3rd year playing as a senior. I've been the Cymbal Section leader Pretty much since I've picked up my first set, thats because most highschool drumlines around here doesn't have a cymbal line or no one really acknowledges them. Last year, a great friend of mines joined our line and tought me a lot of technique and skill for cymbals, and we pretty much incorporated all of that into the line. We wanted to have a kick-butt line, and wanted to show the other drumlines that we competed against what effect the cymbals have on the drumline. All this went well until some of our members started goofing around at rehearsals and start to talk back to me. The problem still persisted throughout the whole marching Season, and I couldn't prove to my Drum instructor, Band Director, and fellow Drummers what cymbals could be capable of.

This year, We have practically Newbies joining the Cymbal line who think that cymbals is a stupid instrument and think all there is to it is banging the cymbals. I want to prove them wrong, but Really don't know where to start. I believe Chemistry is really important for a great cymbal line, and bad chemistry can really mess things up.

I've seen a lot of DCI videos, SCV, Magic, PDX, and other great platelines that I want to make my line into. Its pretty tough to incorporate all the cool visuals and Split parts to a fresh cymbal line, especially because they don't even have the basics down yet..

Most high schools now are getting rid of the cymbal line because most people do not realize what cymbals are capable of, and our highschool is the only one basically left in the district with a cymbal line, but that might change unless our line makes a huge impact this year.

So in your Opinion, what should I do to sort of persuade my line to enjoy playing cymbals, or to make them think that cymbals isn't just a stupid instrument and a waste of time ?

I'd Appreciate your help, Thanks !!

- Danny

The intensity and precision of a good "drum corps quality" cymbal line are amazing and something worth aspiring to. But really, in my opinion, that's icing on the cake. As with any other instrument, it's about the sound. If your cymbal line makes a positive contribution to the overall sound of the ensemble, there's your reason for having a cymbal line.

The high school I work with currently doesn't have a cymbal line. I'd love to have one, but to do it right takes a lot of instructional time and an instructor who knows what they're doing. Along with ignorance of what plates can do (like you mentioned), this knowledge and time burden is probably a reason why some schools and groups don't field cymbal lines.

When I get around to adding a cymbal line, I'll probably start by investing in the books & videos by Eddie Capps or Jeff Kozol (see links below). While I'm familiar with the basics, I've never marched plates and I could really use these guys' expertise, ideas, and exercises.
http://www.cymbaltechnique101.com/
http://www.americandrum.com/catalog/accessories/video_AHCTMC.html

It would seem that one way to make things interesting for your newbies is to dive into split parts right away. Nobody wants to stand around with a heavy pair of plates, banging quarter notes like a wind-up monkey. Splits don't have to be hard to sound cool. Look at this example exercise from the web site promoting Eddie Capps' book:
http://www.cymbaltechnique101.com/preview3.jpg

I really don't think we're that far apart in opinion. I agree wholeheartedly that uniform technique is crucial. I want everyone to have the same approach to an instrument, primarily for sake of uniform sound. Teaching uniform technique will not only address sound quality from player to player, but conveniently will improve the line visually as well.

I'm sure we both want things to look and sound good. I just happen to place an emphasis on sound over visual, especially with beginners. But visual uniformity is obviously important in marching percussion, so even though I consider it secondary to sound quality, I definitely don't think it's unimportant!

Recently I've checked up on Eddie Capps and Jeff Kozol's instructional videos, and still debating whether I should Purchase one copy or both copies. I know for a fact that they'll both help out our line a lot.

For sure, Visual Uniformity is a must on our drumline and we take time balancing that and Sound, though our drum instructor and our band director do not realize the awful sound our plates make [ To be precise, they're all about 8-10 years old, all with some form of dents and nicks on the edges. Not to mention we destroyed about 2 pairs of sabians last year, all having one huge tear from the rim about 4 inches towards the dome ]

Anywho, thanks for the great tips, Our next rehearsal is this wednesday so i'll try to incorporate some of the ideas about Visual and Sound Uniformity.

I do believe that it takes a good amount of time and effort for a cymbal line to all perfect a unison crash or a crash choke, or have the right angles and the same sound coming from the cymbals. Thats why I make our line practice in front of a large mirror, so I can check the angles, playing, and visual techniques. If we continue to practice this way, I think we can accomplish the basics and have a little time to work on Music before Percussion Camp Starts.

If all else fails, I can always put these newbies through Boot Camp

I'm on the cymbal line at UMass, and the #1 thing that was stressed to us was we have to look uniform. If we don't, then what's the point? Cymbals are the primary "visual" aspect to the drumline, they are big and shiny, and any sort of light that hits it is going to be in the audiences face. This is why it's so hard to have a good quality line in high school. In high school people don't have a good sense of time, and those who do probably aren't playing cymbals. I'd say get them working on split parts but nothing too hard, maybe some hinge chokes or somethin, just so they can think as a line instead of individuals.

Find some videos on youtube of cymbal lines, find some good ones of some really cool visuals and show them. I know that pumps me up, seeing the SCV cymbal line doin some fancy stuff always makes me want to become better. After that I'd concentrate on how everybody holds the cymbals, make everybody look the same, and then work on getting a good sound. It takes time to get a good cymbal line. We had 12 cymbal players on the line last year, (inc. 1 80% deaf kid and a few others who just... well... aren't very good at all) and we got it together. We would spend time together alone working on stuff and just repping it over and over. Chemistry is important, that's how a line starts thinking as a line and less like individuals.

Don't kill them though, let them stretch their arms as needed, obviously. The big thing is you don't want to scare them off, you want vets to come back the next year and make the line even better. It takes more than 1 year to get a good line, it takes a lot of time and practice together to get good, so don't expect everybody to be perfect after a month, or 3, or 5.

My advice to you as the section leader. Set up a good regiment that they can follow. Get some good practice charts, stuff they can all handle and set up how the line should be, so when you're gone they can continue to get better. Think of it as a legacy, because 1 year isn't a whole lot of time to get a good cymbal line together. You start it so it can continue and grow. Get them into it, make them want to play. Especially the young ones who are going to be around for a few more years.

Well when someone doesn't do what they are supposed to, or goofs off we do iron crosses. If you don't know what they are, you start with cymbals at your sides. Then, on beat 1 you lift them above your head, much like the first position of an upspray, so the plates are parallel to your body above your head, arms fully extended. Then on beat 2 move your arms so they are perpendicular to your body (stick arms straight out to your side) on beat 3, flip the cymbals so they are no longer parallel to your body, now the bottom of the cymbals are facing the ground (keep arms fully extended) and on beat 4, move your arms in front of you fully extended, bottom of plates facing the ground. Each move has your arms fully extended, and you have to move the plates in control, and in time with everyone else. If anyone messes up, make em do more. We'll do 50-100+ of them at a time, and if anyone asks are we almost done, just tack on another 5. It gets hard after 35, but maaaan does it make you stronger. And let them know, you wanna goof off that's fine, but expect to have your butts beat. Once you guys know how to play and play well then we can have more fun, but they gotta learn the fundamentals and they gotta know when to be good, etc. Just don't take anything from them. Youre the section leader for a reason. If they want to do their own thing then they hafta wait to be section leader.

When we're warming up with the rest of the drumline, and we don't play the specific warm up what we do is endurance, basically holding out the cymbals in different positions, Set, Port, tings, and we do iron cross, the one that both your arms is extended side-out and hold them there for a period of time. I agree, it does make you a lot stronger, and you get enough strength to hold the plates up during field shows and doing visuals.

I like the idea, sounds like a full endurance training and sort of a team effort, I'll use that technique when I start to notice some slacking in the line or if someone starts complaining about sets during percussion camp.

Btw, when you say flip the cymbal on beat 3, do you mean just turning it 90 degrees so that the cymbal faces downward or actually doing a flip up with arms extended ?

Ah, I always thought that there were drum corps type style and traditional type style cymbal playing, but the West-Coast style and East-Coast Style makes it a lot easier. The previous year, we had a cymbal tech who came from Pulse indoor drumline and tried out for SCV [ though she didn't make it, poor her ] And she taught us West-Coast style techniques. Many of the cymbal lines that we competed against and the lines in our district were impressed with how we prepped in time for a crash or a crash-choke, bringing up the cymbals in time and with uniformity. It's a lot of fun and good contribution to the overall visual to the drumline.

I agree with you, stretching is really important before we start to do warmups with the drumline or a run through. Strength is also important, because the type of music we play has the cymbals crashing, sizzling, crash-chokes, etc. for most of the song [This year's field show features the Percussion section, so im stoked for visuals at drum breaks]

Our line does "endurance" type training, which is basically holding the cymbals in different positions such as the crash position, port, iron crosses, etc. for about 10 minutes in each position to the next. Many of the newbies are not as strong for playing cymbals, so we do push ups occasionally, every week increasing the number of counts to 10.

Prepping a crash is pretty difficult for the whole line to do it in sync and with proper sound, especially our line because they're not too familiar with the style yet, though they have improved since the first day of rehersals. Im pretty sure before percussion camp starts, we'll have most of the techniques down and it'll look uniform. Oh and we do play in front of a mirror, it helps greatly. Not only does it help the individual fix his angles, but it also displays how cool the line looks when everything is timed correctly and what he/she needs to fix or get down right.


Thanks for all the great tips, I probably didn't make any sense because I only had about 2 hours of sleep and my right eye just died out on me.

p.s. You play for PDX ? Your show was great, and the cymbal line was frickin' awesome. The visuals you guys did were very cool, and inspired me to stay on the cymbal line for a 3rd year so I could get this line good.

I like how you guys hyped them bandanas, very cool haha Cymbal Lines always Hype the best !!

To fix the problem with the preps, what you need to do is break up your crash into just the first count, which is the bring up. First, just do a tap off or whatever and have them bring them up at the same time, get the feel to where exactly it should go. Do that about 5 times. Then, do that, and then on count one, go to the A positon. Just that much, ONLY that much. Do that till it feels right. Then add the V position. Do that till you are comfotable.

Now for the conact. On count 3 now, your going to go to the "bottom" step, which is when it's still in V, just they're touching now. Keep in mind that with 18 inch cymbals, the right cymbal should be touching one inch up. 19 inch is 1.25, and 20 is 1.5 inches up. This is count three.

Count four is called the "top" step. All you do on this one is smash them together. DO NOT LET THEM RING. Keep them scrushed, kind of like a crunch. The "Bottom Top" steps are the MOST IMPORTANT of all the steps. This is where you learn what makes the difference between a "Poppy" sound, and a nice clean beautiful sounding crash.

The next two counts, 1& 2 of the next measure, are just the A V steps again. I have done this in every cymbal line I've ever been in. We refer to it as the "A V Bottom Top A V Set". We actually learned this before we learned how to crash. And boy o boy, I think we repped this more then the snares repped 8's lol. Talk about a pain. This excercise is great for letting the muscles know exactly where to put each cymbal when.

Ju guys ever do this one at PDX Font?

O, And remember to stretch after. I don't think that has ben discussed yet, and it is actually MORE important to do then stretching before. You get sore from leaving all the lactic acid ln your muscles, not from working out with tight muscles, thats how you hurt your self. To prevent soreness, remember to take an extra 10 minutes after and do some nice stretching.

p.s. Just FYI. "Newbies" was SO last year lol.

You mean Orchestral crashes? We did them a LOT in 07, but in 06 we basically did none (most of the line was made up of kids who were new to plates and couldn't understand the concept of an orchestral crash . . . myself included).

but in 2007, they were in all parts of the show. We didn't do them exactly like yours (I believe you guys did the strict-movement one, where you literally spell out "A" and "V"). We had a much more flowy one, similar to SCV and Spirit 2004. And I think we only prepped with the "V" although I may just be tired and forgetful.

And, thanks Dannerz. Yeah, I marched PDX for a season and a half. I had to leave the plateline after our first show of the season due to a bad back injury I suffered before the season. I moved to the Pit afterwards, and played chimes/acted. I was one of three fat dudes in a Toga.

PDX won't be coming back this season. Instead, they've joined forces with Stryke. We're keeping the name Stryke, and I'll still be marching Plates(unless of course I fail at auditions. Haha.).

And yeah, our Bandanas were effin' sweet. If you didn't know which one I was (I'm not that hard to miss), just look for the big pony-tailed dude with the lime-green bandana and glasses.

What? Lol no, I ment stated above, for vertical crashes. And since when has SCV been flowy? They ARE west coast, they're more rigid and tight then a new born christian mother. http://www.vicfirth.com/features/scv_pasic06.html prime example. East coast is the one that flows, http://youtube.com/watch?v=IU2xm-gBNbA Bluecoats 2001 is probably the best example for east coast. Now take a complete hybrid of both cymbal lines, and you gots what Penn State and Crossmen do. Of course crossmen with their own signature crash of course. Hope this helps .

i think that a great cymbal line happens when people actually want to play cymbals.
a lot of times i see cymbal lines where the members say 'im just here cause im a freshman' or 'i really wanted to play snare but im not good enough yet so i play these now'
they are usually the cymbal lines with the easy books and the tame visuals.
if you can show them that cymbals can be just as challenging as any other instrument, they might be persuaded to practice and respect their instruments.
the moment that all the members of any section want to be doing what they are doing, and put in plenty of effort, they start kicking butt.

Okay. I'd like to chime in here. What makes a great cymbal line? There are a lot of things. The first and most important thing is that the line sounds good to fit the rest of the group. Second, looking the same. From prep to crash to release, everything must look as close as possible. Details! It's not about flashy visuals. If you can't crash well and look good together, visuals mean nothing. Cymbal players are percussionists first. Their job is to complement the battery.

West Coast vs. East Coast doesn't matter. That's a style preference. One is not better than the other. The most important thing is to get a great sounding crash at the right dynamic level at the correct time in the music. I also like a cymbal line that sets a great example for the rest of the group (band or corps). They should show up early to rehearsals, have everything prepared and ready to go, and be humble and professional. That is a great cymbal line.

Hey guys, I just wanted to let you all know that our cymbal line is getting great, we all have good chemistry and so far got a lot of the basics down. As we move on to our 7th rehersal, we're advancing on towards music and drill for our upcoming season.

All your wonderful tips helped out a great deal, and I made sure to contribute all of that into our line this year. We still have a lot to do and a lot to accomplish, but so far its a great start.

Thanks All !!

p.s. We just picked up 5 pairs of the American Drum straps, and they work great !! Thanks to Mr. Kozol for his fabtastic product

Dannerz,

Glad you like the straps. A suggestion that might help your hands. Lace them up inside out and then flip them over after they are tied. The straps will then conform better to the shape of your hand and not rub so much.

Good luck!

Go to you tube and search Dowling Catholic Drumline. Check that cymbal line out. Stronger than a garlic malt!

don't do iron crosses for extended periods of time per rep it's bad for your muscles.

Anybody that weight lifts or has done any sort of weight training will tell you keeping your arm in one position with weight builds no muscle at all and is actually very bad for your body. Also if while you're doing iron cross you do it too long this will also be bad for your body as you can easily set your back or arms basically training you body to learn technique that is incorrect.

It is important to rest between reps, or you'll be destroying your technique.

Also if you do like doing iron crosses or would like to continue to (take a look at SCV - they don't do them) take it down the amount of time you hold in each position - no more than 8 counts per position at about 120 - and just rep that more times.

The more your arms move the better for your body, but I strongly advise against iron cross.

Accuracy, Dynamics, & Showmanship. I think this what you need to have a good one. Best wishes...

if you want to get them "excited" about a cymbal line show them some videos...personally i think that the cymbal line is more...the higher visual section of the battery...i mean...they need to sound good of course...but it doesn't take "a lot" of work to get cymbals to sound good...and if there just walking around playing no ones going to notice them as much...but if there doing a chrash beetween there legs (and still sounding good) and twirling and doing cartwheels and all that stuff people are going to watch them and like the cymbal line much better than they would have normally thought... :P

good attitudes

WOW, just WOW!!! I love how naive young people can be sometimes. If you've ever really played cymbals, you'll know that it takes a lot of work to deliver a good quality crash. I know people that have gone to summer camps, like Aspen and Tanglewood just to study cymbals. If any of my students asked if they could do crashes between their legs, I swear I'd punch them in the face (not literally, but you get the idea).

Now, lets talk about your punctuation skills, or lack thereof. We do not use ellipsis to end sentences. A single period, question mark or exclamation point will do just fine. A good friend of mine teaches in Utah, I thought the kids were smarter there.

Hey man, some of us ARE smart! Haha I did a search for Utah and again, is that friend Mike Huestis?

I think it is more important to play well with good uniformity. Cymbals are already a visual instrument without adding "between the legs" kinds of stuff. The angles are so important. Oh and a hardcore attitude helps a ton (see Santa Clara Vanguard)