Cymbal is a percussion instrument made of circular bras plate; it’s often used in Tibetan music’s. Cymbals are major instrument of Buddhist rituals & meditation. The cymbals consist of thin round plates and can be played as pair which is struck sidelong against each other to produce a crashing sound; it can be also played by striking with sticks causing the vibration on it.
The size & weight of cymbals plays major role in the sound that it produces. Cymbals are popularly measured by their diameter in inches & centimeters. For louder sounds bigger and thicker cymbals are more appropriate. For lowered pitch and faster sound one can used thinner and small cymbals.
The profile of the cymbal is the vertical distance of the bow from the bottom of the bell to the cymbal edge (higher profile cymbals are more bowl shaped). The profile affects the pitch of the cymbal; higher profile cymbals have higher pitch.
Historically, cymbals were made from individually cast cymbal blanks which were then hot-forged, often with many annealing processes, to form the rough shape of the cymbal.
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The finishing stages consisted of cold-hammering to unevenly harden the metal, then turning on a lathe to reduce the thickness, and then often a final cold hammering.
The hot and cold hammering were all performed entirely by a highly skilled hand and was a labor-intensive process. The only machine to touch the cymbal was a hand-held. This lathing step could decrease the weight of the cymbal by two-thirds or more, and resulted in further uneven hardening which produces much of the tone of a traditionally made cymbal. This effect was deliberately enhanced by use of a coarse lathe tool, and sometimes by a very limited final polishing, leaving the lathe tool marks as “tone grooves”. Traditional cymbals are lathed over the entire surface top and bottom.
There are mainly two types of Tibetan Cymbals:
The Rolmo Cymbals
Silnyen Cymbals
The Rolmo Cymbal is a horizontal ritual cymbal used by Tibetan monks in Buddhist rituals. It has a wide central boss and is struck vertically, in contrast to the Silnyen.
The Silnyen Cymbal is a Tibetan percussion instrument in the form of a cymbal with a small or no central boss. The Silnyen is struck by horizontal movement and is used in Buddhist rites.
Cymbals produced in Nepal and Tibet is hand hammered and purely made by Hand.
Dolma Sherpa
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