Splash Madness

I"ve been really finding some interesting sounds on the kit lately; mostly by using a splash cymbal in creative ways.

I used to have a cymbal arm attached to my high hat stand so that I had an 8" Zildjian A splash right above my hats for easy accents. Recently I purchased new hardware for my Gretsch kit. I"m going for a vintage setup and picked up the DW flat based 6000 series hardware. I got 2 straight stands 1 boom, flat high hat stand and 2 snare stands (one for my 12" tom).

The stands are much lighter weight and I didn"t want to unbalance the light high-hats with a heavy boom arm. I couldn"t really justify a separate stand just for the tiny splash so I had it left over. I ended up putting the splash in some creative places.

On top of the high hats
I started out putting the splash on a separate top hat clutch that I had lying around. This allowed me to put the splash directly above the high hats. It also gave me the ability to easily pull the splash off and use it on the snare, or replace it as the top high hat cymbal. Pretty cool.

Next I tried the splash over the high hat pull rod without any felt or anything just letting it flop there. This provides an interesting pseudo delay effect on all left foot high hat closes. Kind of a "chick shaw, chick shaw" kind of sound, where the "shaw" sound is consistently behind the beat a bit. You could still hit the splash solo. I also tried putting the splash on the high hat rod but positioned where it would rest on my first crash/ride cymbal which is positioned between my high hat and my rack tom. This provided a nice little sizzle when riding on my first cymbal or crashing on it.

In the high hats
I had a lot of fun playing with the 8" splash between the two high hats. It"s a different sound if you put it upside down also. I did have to widen my high hats in order to accommodate the cymbal though. I got a great dirty high hat sound with this technique. Doing pea-soup style accents sounded awesome, almost like a great tape saturation kind of chunky sound. Surprisingly it took really heavy playing to get the splash to start creeping out, even on 13" hats.

On the cow bell
The splash also fits on the cow bell mounting rod that I keep on my bass drum hoop for my cowbells. Again no felt or anything to protect the splash but it was an interesting placement. I also tried stacking the splash on a 12" cheapo Wuhan china on the cowbell, and that sounded really trashy and nice. I was even able to hit the cowbell and stacked china/splash a the same time to get an interesting effect.

On the LP Crasher
I usually keep a smaller LP Crasher on top of the cowbell as above. I found I could put the splash on the mounting pins that run through the crashers. This was similar to the sound of the stacked china/splash but a little trashier and shorter decay.

On the cymbals
I don"t usually use top felts on my cymbal stands. I have a feeling that his helps the cymbals move easier and resonate better, but I can"t really quantify that assumption. So, its pretty easy to pull the nut off a cymbal between songs and throw a splash cymbal on top of another cymbal. This can have different sounds depending on the cymbal. The shape of the bell on the splash and the cymbal beneath it are both important. If the cymbals are too similar in shape it can make the stack sound like big old high hat. If they are different in size it can make a great sizzle sound on rides, or a china kind of sound on a crash cymbal.

Balancing Choices and Limitations
I"ve found it to be a very creative tool to limit my sound sources for a particular track. With a simple 4 piece kit with only 2 or 3 cymbals other than high hats, I have created some great limitations to work within. Appart from being much easier to haul around, I find that for some reason these imposed limitations facilitate better takes. More so than when I was playing a ‘universal" kit designed to be ready to handle any situation without modification. So if the tune really needs a sizzling china sound I can add a splash on my main crash cymbal and get the sound while keeping the limitations. In this case I have to remember that my main crash has been repurposed, and if I want a standard crash sound then I have to rely on my high hats or ride cymbal. Or if the original crash sound is needed, then I can put the splash on my ride. It"s been a lot of fun, and has opened some door for me.