SwingDJs

a ride cymbal usually has a long decay and low tone which makes it "wash" over the music after being struck. the initial attack goes 'ping' but there's a 'ingggggggggg' that goes on for a while.

when you hit an open hi hat it goes "ping" and then decays very rapidly. if you hit a semi-closed hi hat the top cymbal clatters against the lower cymbal which makes it sizzle and go "psh" after the ping. but it still decays rapidly. if you hit a closed hihat it goes "tick" and dies almost immediately. if you close a hi hat with your foot it goes "chick" and dies almost immediately.

pick any modern jazz piano trio and the drummer will be using his ride cymbal to swing (ping ping-a-ping), with the closing hihat ("chick") marking the upbeat (2 and 4).

more than you needed to know about drumming. gosh, i should just listen to the clips and say "that's a ride cymbal not a hihat" but right now i can't. i'm sure in about 10 hours someone else will say authoritatively what you guys are hearing.

cool! That explains a lot - about the decay factor.

On the hit-hat usage that Reuben and Brenda find annoying, the use of the open-close hit-hat to the beat was really put into use by Jo Jones with the Basie band in the 30s and 40s.

It sounds like Julius is a drummer and he can talk more extensively about the history associated with that. Jo Jones was the master of the high-hat that Reuben dislikes. I would venture to guess that 50% or more of the Basie small group and big band charts from the 30s and 40s with Jo Jones use that exact phrase. In fact Jo Jones had the nickname "Mr High-Hat"

If you want some fine video examples, check out Jammin' The Blues and The Sound of Jazz. Both have Jo Jones in the videos and you can visually see the use of stick, open-close, and hand usage to emphasize the beat on the high-hat.

When I get more time I'll go into more detail on Reuben's and Brenda's comments.

We need Josh on here... or Paul Lines. I'm pretty sure it's the high hat Julius, cause I've talked to Josh about it before.

And there are of course different ways of applying it, and different cymbals have different tones. Jerry mentions Jo Jones' high hatting, which is on target, but Jo Jones' execution of the high hat sounds different then many of these clips.

To attempt to put it phonetically...
Jo Jones sounds like: ckuu ku ku ckuu ku ku ckuu.
Many of these clips sound like: tiss ti ti tiss ti ti tiss.

I'm no drummer (nor DJ either) but even I can tell you it's definitely the hi-hat. It is more annoying on some of the tracks than others. And yes Jo Jones was well known for drumming that way.

What Julius is guessing it is, is something else entirely. That ride cymbal too, annoys the hell out of me very often when I hear it. (mostly because what I'd like to hear instead is a booming kick drum.)

So the high hat and the ride cymbal are both annoying? Didn't Chick Webb make extensive use of the high hat?
I like the way the high hat was employed by McKinney's Cotton Pickers, Fletcher Henderson, early Duke Ellington and others. It seems like at the end of the song they would give a quick high hat that's just kinda cool and querky.

sonofvu wrote:So the high hat and the ride cymbal are both annoying? Didn't Chick Webb make extensive use of the high hat?
I like the way the high hat was employed by McKinney's Cotton Pickers, Fletcher Henderson, early Duke Ellington and others. It seems like at the end of the song they would give a quick high hat that's just kinda cool and querky.

I think the high hat used rhythmically for punches is awesome --- it's the repetitive "1 & a 2" the entire time that is annoying - regardless of what cymbal is used to produce the sound.

djstarr wrote: I think the high hat used rhythmically for punches is awesome --- it's the repetitive "1 & a 2" the entire time that is annoying - regardless of what cymbal is used to produce the sound.

Word.

At least two factors for us to consider with regard to hi-hat usage. Cymbal technology (ie. different kinds of cymbals being available) and recording techonology.

One: In early hot jazz, it seems, anecdotally though my exploration of pictures of drummers from the time and close listening to recordings, that many (most?) didn't use what we today consider a hi-hat cymbal at all. I don't know exactly when the hi-hat came into being as we know it. Did a google search, but found nothing. But, it is clear to me that some sizable population of drummers simply didn't use this early on (perhaps they simply didn't exist yet?).

Two: Even after the advent and wide-spread use of the hi-hat cymbal, the recording techniques were not in place to effectively pick it up on wax without having the drums completely overwhelm the recording. The snare, for example, is significantly louder than a hi-hat. Since most (all?) of the recordings made back then did not individually mic up every instrument, and indeed every part of the drums, like they do in more modern recordings, I think people just don't *hear* the hi hat on older recordings the same way that you can on many recordings post-war.

If one listens to the drums particularly closely, and I have to a lot of recordings, you can hear evidence of the "psh, t t, psh" kind of hi-hat rides (which I believe is what Reuben is refering to) quite early on -- certainly in the 30s. But, it wasn't until recording technology became "more sophisticated" that they were really front and center of the rhythm.

Perhaps simultaneously, what Jo Jones (and others) did that was so important was remove the 4/4 kick drum pattern that was nearly completely pervasive previously. Indeed, the straight four on the kick drum was the basic rhythm of jazz drumming for a good long while. What Jo Jones (and others) did was replace it with increased use of the hi hat as the primary rhythm.

Many drummers jumped right on the new sound, and certainly that was evidenced in the post-war recordings. Others had a harder time. I remember reading in some book that Gene Krupa had a really hard time "letting go" of the kick drum as basic rhythm. I'm sure others did, too.

Anyhoo....

djstarr wrote: I think the high hat used rhythmically for punches is awesome --- it's the repetitive "1 & a 2" the entire time that is annoying - regardless of what cymbal is used to produce the sound.

That's really strange to me because most jazz since the mid thirties onwards uses that rhythm. In fact, that rhythm pretty much defined the transition from hot jazz to swing music in my opinion. As soupbone just said, recording techniques (and modern noise reduction) made the hi-hat less prominent until the advent of magnetic tape recording in the 40s and 50s. But it's always been there in swing music.

Soupbone wrote: Perhaps simultaneously, what Jo Jones (and others) did that was so important was remove the 4/4 kick drum pattern that was nearly completely pervasive previously.

And by the way, when I say "important" here, I mean in historical terms. Not that I necessarily favor it. Personal, I play drums in the older 4-on-the-floor (with brushes) style.

Hmmm. I think I feel like a little "psh t t psh" swings it (as Julius said), but too much "psh t t psh" smooths it out so much that the rhythm doesn't drive as hard as I'd like when I'm dancing something like swing.

(I'm basing this on live music from the same bands, paying attention within the same gigs...)

Soupbone wrote:What Jo Jones (and others) did was replace it with increased use of the hi hat as the primary rhythm.

I'm just going to add to this: while Jones moved playing his ride rhythm to the hi-hat while it opened and closed he also kept it up on a suspended cymbal when he moved around his kit. This is now called the ride cymbal. The tendency before that was to play the ride rhythm on the snare or rarely on a closed hi-hat. Playing the ride rhythm on the ride cymbal became the tendency in modern jazz for various reasons. You will even find drummers with several ride cymbals for different sounds.


Sid Catlet is the other drummer who pionnered this style of playing, but unlike Jones he's been creditted for making the drums more active in the playing of Jazz. In fact some of the books I've read but more emphasis on Catlett rather than Jones.

Personally the use of the ride cymbal dosen't bother me, nor does it excite me. It's just there, keeping time. What really gets me excited about drumming is when they work in with the rest of the group while still keeping a solid ground beat.

-Kevin

julius wrote:Not having heard the clips, are you sure you don't mean "ride cymbal" instead of "high hat"? The hi-hat goes 'psh ting a ting' and the ride cymbal goes "ping ping a ping". Most classic swing songs use the hi-hat extensively but the ride somewhat sparingly, although the noise reduction process usually eliminates the high hat entirely.

To clarify even further for others, the hi-hat is the one that has two cymbals that clamp together so as to kill the "ring" on the cymbal with a swallowing sort of clomp when the cymbals clap together. The ride cymbal is simply a single cymbal hanging over the drums that has more of a "ping" or "ting" sound.

I do think Reuben meant hi-hat because he has complained about it before. I think what bothers him (and what bothers me) is when the hi-hat closes and swallows and stops the swing rhythm abruptly, which interrupts the "flow." It is a commonly-perceived musical swing rhythm among musicians, but one that is common to Glenn Miller/Lawrence Welk-type Swing, not Duke or Basie Swing.

It also is not just a function of closing the hi-hat in the midst of the rhythm, but how abruptly the drummer closes it so as to create a sharp cut or, instead, a loose accent in the rhythm. Dorky, (dare I say) "white" swing tends to sharply and abruptly cut the rhythm short, whereas as "better" swing (IMHO) provides the accent without allowing it to interfere with the underlying rhythmic flow.

One major difference/improvement between the test gig of the Austin Exchange Big Band and the actual Exchange performance was my suggestion to the drummer to avoid using the hi-hat to create that abrupt swing rhythm, and instead carry it lightly on the ride cymbal.

Soupbone wrote:At least two factors for us to consider with regard to hi-hat usage. Cymbal technology (ie. different kinds of cymbals being available) and recording techonology.

One: In early hot jazz, it seems, anecdotally though my exploration of pictures of drummers from the time and close listening to recordings, that many (most?) didn't use what we today consider a hi-hat cymbal at all. I don't know exactly when the hi-hat came into being as we know it. Did a google search, but found nothing. But, it is clear to me that some sizable population of drummers simply didn't use this early on (perhaps they simply didn't exist yet?).

Two: Even after the advent and wide-spread use of the hi-hat cymbal, the recording techniques were not in place to effectively pick it up on wax without having the drums completely overwhelm the recording. The snare, for example, is significantly louder than a hi-hat. Since most (all?) of the recordings made back then did not individually mic up every instrument, and indeed every part of the drums, like they do in more modern recordings, I think people just don't *hear* the hi hat on older recordings the same way that you can on many recordings post-war.

If one listens to the drums particularly closely, and I have to a lot of recordings, you can hear evidence of the "psh, t t, psh" kind of hi-hat rides (which I believe is what Reuben is refering to) quite early on -- certainly in the 30s. But, it wasn't until recording technology became "more sophisticated" that they were really front and center of the rhythm.

Perhaps simultaneously, what Jo Jones (and others) did that was so important was remove the 4/4 kick drum pattern that was nearly completely pervasive previously. Indeed, the straight four on the kick drum was the basic rhythm of jazz drumming for a good long while. What Jo Jones (and others) did was replace it with increased use of the hi hat as the primary rhythm.

Many drummers jumped right on the new sound, and certainly that was evidenced in the post-war recordings. Others had a harder time. I remember reading in some book that Gene Krupa had a really hard time "letting go" of the kick drum as basic rhythm. I'm sure others did, too.

(Great post.)