Technique
In an orchestral setting, suspended cymbals are most often used for rolled crescendos, or swells. To do this, the player uses a single-stroke roll on the outside edge of the cymbal, using soft mallets, one on each side. The terminology most commonly used to describe this technique is a suspended cymbal roll. At times, a score also calls for hitting the cymbal with a stick or scraping it with a triangle beater. Other techniques utilize the bow of a string instrument, usually that of a contrabass, to be drawn slowly across the outside rim of the cymbal. This technique will give a very shrill, eerie sound, particularly useful in film music.
Another lesser-known technique is to place a suspended cymbal upside down on a timpani head. The timpanist is instructed to roll ad lib on the suspended cymbal while moving the timpani pedal up and down as a glissando. Film composer Danny Elfman has made great use of this technique, which needs to be performed in a more "transparent" orchestral setting to be heard.
Other composers will use a sample, or recording, of the cymbal struck by a mallet with a long, natural decay. They will then play that segment backwards, so the effect heard is a crescendo to a crisp cutoff of the sound. This is used to great effect for film music, pop music, and even to punctuate scenes in many so-called reality television shows.
Read more about this topic: Suspended Cymbal
Famous quotes containing the word technique:
“The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Technique is the test of sincerity. If a thing isn’t worth getting the technique to say, it is of inferior value.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“The audience is the most revered member of the theater. Without an audience there is no theater. Every technique learned by the actor, every curtain, every flat on the stage, every careful analysis by the director, every coordinated scene, is for the enjoyment of the audience. They are our guests, our evaluators, and the last spoke in the wheel which can then begin to roll. They make the performance meaningful.”
—Viola Spolin (b. 1911)