Are you a drum person or a cymbal person

lhrocker

Member
I would be pretty happy on a 5 piece kit as long as I have tons of cymbals to hit. What do you like? Large kit with a few cymbals or less drums with lots of cymbals?
 
I will take toms over cymbals any day, but I know I am going to be in the minority on this one.
 
4 drums, 4 cymbals. Kick, snare, hi-tom, low-tom... Hats, "short" decay crash, ride, and longer decay crash.

I could and do even just do away with a crash and a tom to play 3 and 3 quite a bit.
 
I guess I know a bit more about cymbals. Currently I mostly use a four piece kit and 3 or 4 cymbals. Despite the cymbal interest I have two rides that I've had for months that I still barely know how to use, so having much more is going to be a matter of diminishing returns when it comes to extra sounds for me. Same goes for drums.

The exception is when I play metal and some of those things are only going to be used for one sound, then I play a bigger setup top and bottom to get the more contrasting sounds at higher volumes and play more drum than cymbal orientated. But my cymbal/drum ratio remains fairly even.

While I read up more about cymbals and explore them a bit more, (I will probably not buy a new drum nearly as often...) I would not still call myself a cymbal person, just an overall drumkit person.
 
I think I'm more of a drum person. I don't like a hug kit like Sticks but put more thought into my drums than my cymbals, especially my snare. If my snare sound isn't working for me then I'm just having a bad day. I play a 4 piece kit with 5 cymbals so I have more cymbals than drums but those drums had better be sounding nice and crisp or I'll get the key out and give them what for.
 
After adding & subtracting cymbals and drums every once and a while I always come back to 4 drums and 4 cymbals (hats counted as one cymbal).
That being said, I actually have twice the number of cymbals than drums.
 
Cymbals, with the caveat that I'm playing a decent quality set (not necessarily top of the line) of drums that sound and feel good. Even with that, I can tolerate mediocre drums (except snare drum) - bad cymbals are hard for me to live with.

Having been on a major search for many years (no joke) my cymbal search has finally reached it's end this month with the discovery of Bosphorus back in June. Having just broke the bank buying complete sets of the Master Vintage and New Orleans, I feel all basis are covered for now and into the future.

Set up includes 2 Rides / 2 Crashes + Hi Hats.
 
In the very beginning, I was always more drawn to cymbal tones than drum tones. I was happy when I got my first drum set. (gold sparkle Stewarts) I was ecstatic when, the next Christmas, I got my first 2 Zildjain cymbals, a 20" ride and an 18" crash. They were 42 and 36 dollars respectively, reluctantly purchased in 1971 by my dear old dad, bought from Benny Cintioli himself, if anyone knows that character.
 
I'm surprised there isn't more one-sided-ness here... Flatly put, A good cymbal will have tons more options than the best tom. Sure, you can tune a drum to make different tones, but once you start playing, you have a lot more voices in a good cymbal... I guess that's why it's more important to me, anyway. Doing more with less is very appealing to me.
 
I'm surprised there isn't more one-sided-ness here... Flatly put, A good cymbal will have tons more options than the best tom. Sure, you can tune a drum to make different tones, but once you start playing, you have a lot more voices in a good cymbal... I guess that's why it's more important to me, anyway. Doing more with less is very appealing to me.

Agreed. But for me, that feel-it-in-your-chest, toe-tapping rythmic pulse that first attracted me to the instrument and has never let me go, has always come from a drum....not a cymbal.

No doubting I love a good cymbal too. I own way more cymbals than I do drums and I'm looking to acquire even more, but when it comes to that sound.....it's always a drum that does it for me.
 
Kick and snare <=> hats and ride
three toms <=> three crashes

That's basically it for me. Can't say I put more importance on one more than the other.

I can't imagine just keeping time on cymbals, but just playing drums without cymbals would get old fast, too. Cymbals are funny things given how unique they are and how you can't change or tune them. So I seem to be accumulating a small collection of them. However, I could see myself collecting more snares, which seem to be the closest drum equivalent to cymbals. I've pretty much got the only kick and tom setup I'll ever need.
 
As far as spending $$ and "collecting" gear, my first few years of playing I focused on cymbals; the last few years I have switched to drums; especially snares. I've only been playing since my late 20s.
 
I'm surprised there isn't more one-sided-ness here... Flatly put, A good cymbal will have tons more options than the best tom. Sure, you can tune a drum to make different tones, but once you start playing, you have a lot more voices in a good cymbal... I guess that's why it's more important to me, anyway. Doing more with less is very appealing to me.
Well I think if you look at any drum solo everyone always goes gaga over the tom play. Especially the uneducated. Doing more with even more appeals me more. :) I would much rather listen to someone play their toms than their cymbals.
 
A kit with an imbalance of pieces feels awkward to me. Too many drums and too few cymbals is just a waste of space, and too many cymbals and too few drums is just gaudy. I like having my goal of a four-piece with two crashes, a ride, and hats, because it's a balanced set-up. I could just as easily take a page out of Portnoy's book, but that would be expensive.
 
Well I think if you look at any drum solo everyone always goes gaga over the tom play. Especially the uneducated. Doing more with even more appeals me more. :) I would much rather listen to someone play their toms than their cymbals.

You make some interesting points. I had to think about the "uneducated" comment for a moment. Though I still feel opposite in the category of what I'd rather hear, I do remember before I started playing music, when I was not looking at things from a musicians perspective as now... I'm sure a lot of my "favorite drum parts" were more tom heavy; almost into the tribal-ish deal. I imagine now that more folks in all would probably also rather hear lots of toms if you asked them.

Given some weird situation where I'm forced to play with a hat-kick-snare combo, plus one other item... I might now think a bit more about something like a huge floor tom, which, at least in my view has more potential for different sounds than the higher pitched ones I'm more apt to leave off my kit. Again, the word tribal comes to mind... I can imagine all kinds of cool patterns even now that would make for some impressive sounding stuff, especially for a solo or drum-heavy music.

In the end, though, I'd probably still default, and feel more comfortable with a nice ride cymbal than a tom in that weird situation above... I'd have a harder time staying out of the way of a lot of different types of songs if I tried to incorporate a bunch of tom work, but a ride has all kinds of things to do... In a way it can pretty much make up for the lack of a bunch of other cymbals if played well.

Cool stuff. I'm glad I was surprised by the responses.
 
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