To slosh or not to slosh?

Anon La Ply

Anon La Ply

Diamond Member
Just checked out this - Abe Laborial with Eric Clapton - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wulRfEmdxMY

I was expecting Abe to play crisp hats when he came in (as I almost certainly would have done if I was drumming) but he chose to slosh.

I'm wondering why he would make that decision - maybe because the guitar line was more flowing than accented. Maybe to mix things up because he played closed hats in other songs. Maybe it sounded think to him with closed hats and he (or Eric) wanted things fatter and looser? Maybe it was just instinct from the get go?

Any thoughts? Do you play a lot of slosh hats? Just a little here and there? Do you play more or less sloshy hats than is usual for your genre? (eg. Tony Williams and Lenny White).

To start the ball rolling, in my current band I only slosh the hats in a few buildups. In the rock bands I used to play in I usually sloshed in mean, dirty RnR but went for crisp hats in other songs, sometimes closed down tight for a clean chick and sometimes loose enough for a small ring.
 
I think in that occasion and the guitar sound the sloshy hats just fit. I have heard Clapton play that song so many different ways.
 
I use that technique several times during each gig I play with my No. 1 band. I know I used it in last night's gig, but I couldn't tell you where or in which songs. It's an effect that works well in heavy guitar sections. It cuts better than crisp hats - maybe that's why. I use a sloshy ride cymbal to do essentially the same thing. My ride does it well which is probably a reason I picked it.

Anon, I'm not sure you and I have crossed paths in threads before, so I am not sure if you have a band you play with or not. If you do, I would suggest trying a sloshy sound in a hard-edged guitar section of a song and see if you like the effect.

Brent
 
Anon La Ply said:
Any thoughts? Do you play a lot of slosh hats? Just a little here and there? Do you play more or less sloshy hats than is usual for your genre?
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I love slosh hats and I use it a lot, I use a lot of variations of sloshy hats depending on the groove I'm playing, my remote hat is quite loose as well and I vary the angle of the stick to get it more or less sloshy, sometimes it's just a little loose so I can still do some opening and some loose barks too.

I use to play the hats quite tight in the past, I still play like that if the song needs it, but I prefer the hi-hat to be slightly loose (not sloshy per say), but it's still very clean if you know what I mean, I just think it gives an organic taste to the groove.

If I play fast acceleration fills, such as 16th, 32nd or sextuplets on the hats, it's usually quite tight and crisp. my favorite is to play the half time shuffle on the slightly loose remote hat with the right hand and play the ghosted triplet on the tight main hat with the backbeat on the snare with the left hand, it just sounds so good IMO.

BTW, Crossroad sounds good with the sloshy hats, I love the way Abe's lay it down, greasy and groovy as hell :)
 
I've both sloshed and been sloshed before, Pol. Much like anything else I do, I try to let the feel dictate my feel......whether that be nothing but a tight crisp closed hat sound, sloshing for buildups or effect or sloshing my way through the whole song. I've employed 'em all at one point or another.

Why did Abe do it? Who the hell knows but Abe. But it's quite a laid back, groovin' version of that track and I guess he or Eric thought it just added to the laboured feel of the song. Just another effect to spice it up a little.
 
sloshing for buildups or effect or sloshing my way through the whole song.
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+1 ... I usually use it for climatic effects during guitar solos (or sometimes during key points - last verse of the song, etc.). I think it is somewhat rare to have it sloshing through the whole tune - "Rock & Roll" being one of the exceptions.

It is one of the tools for expression / emotion in a song that is available to us.

Cheers,
radman
 
IMO slosh does not work for a tune like Crossroads, not disrespect to Abe though. He's great
Slosh is a great tool, and just like wash riding can really elevate the dynamic. A very powerful tool.
 
B-squared said:
I am not sure if you have a band you play with or not. If you do, I would suggest trying a sloshy sound in a hard-edged guitar section of a song and see if you like the effect.
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Brent, my band is lounge so there ain't no hard edged guitar to be found.

I'm interested in the decision-making process... in my old four-piece guitar band days I took the bog standard approach of sloshing or playing ride during guitar solos to make up for the loss of rhythm guitar.

I certainly have sloshed in the past, like in the solo of this ancient cover of Cold Turkey http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w5risfukzc (solo starts at 3:40) ... starting with tight hats and gradually loosening as it builds.

Less typical is the slosh hat playing by Rick Marotta on an old Steve Khan jazzrock track http://www.amazon.com/Arrows/dp/B0083WN5BI/ref=tmm_other_meta_binding_title_popover (click the preview for the song Some Arrows)
 
While watching the Clapton video I was all prepared to be charitable but I have to say I do find it a bit of a weird choice. I'd have gone for something less open than that. As it stands there's not enough contrast between the two sections for me.
 
Bo Eder said:
Hey Grea, you know how this works. There are no rules.
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That's true, Bo, but I feel the same as OT and Ben - I find the open hats in that song an odd choice, and arguably not an ideal one.

But Abe is a superb world class drummer and I'm a local no-name so I imagine he has something going on that I don't know about (which admittedly could be as simple as EC requesting it).
 
Anon La Ply said:
That's true, Bo, but I feel the same as OT and Ben - I find the open hats in that song an odd choice, and arguably not an ideal one.

But Abe is a superb world class drummer and I'm a local no-name so I imagine he has something going on that I don't know about (which admittedly could be as simple as EC requesting it).
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And you know, both Abe and EC could be watching that same performance and swearing not to ever do that again. They are who they are, but they still have to put their pants on the same way we all do. Now, Jenns Hannemann is a totally different case, though ;)
 
Often when you're in the driver's seat things can sound totally different to out front and it's not always possible to know how it'll sit in the whole arrangement until after the fact. For all we know he might have watched this performance back and thought on reflection that it didn't quite work as well as it might have done. Taking risks is what makes an artist great.
 
I can only see this as a mutual decision between EC and Abe. They probably ran through the concert and liked the sloshy hi hats.

I use them when I want a long, constant, sound instead of individual notes.
 
Anon La Ply said:
I certainly have sloshed in the past, like in the solo of this ancient cover of Cold Turkey http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w5risfukzc (solo starts at 3:40) ... starting with tight hats and gradually loosening as it builds.
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Interesting. This (your playing) sounds a lot like the way I approach using slosh. I'm not sure about the decision making process, except that I work out my basic approach when we arrange songs in practice. For me, arrangement is a trial and error exercise. Sometimes I guess right the first the first time and I play something that matches what the band is doing with the song. Sometimes it takes me a few tries. I'm not sure there's a way to "left brain" your way through the process. Realize, I say that as an engineer, and nobody loves developing algorithms to solve problems than engineers. :)
 
When in doubt, I usually go the sloshed route.
 
Anon La Ply said:
That's true, Bo, but I feel the same as OT and Ben - I find the open hats in that song an odd choice, and arguably not an ideal one.

But Abe is a superb world class drummer and I'm a local no-name so I imagine he has something going on that I don't know about (which admittedly could be as simple as EC requesting it).
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Really? Arguably not an ideal choice? The open hi-hat choice is usually based on timbre and feel. If the guitars are overdriven or distorted, that's usually the green light for sloshy hats. But it's the legato nature of the guitar riff (there are no rests at all, from the guitar or any other element of the music) that makes a long hi-hat sound so appropriate. If you played the hi-hats such that you could hear any silence in between the strokes, it would sound stiff to my ears.

Conversely, if the guitar tone is clean, or the main element of the song is at all staccato, then tight hats are probably a good choice.

I'm sure there are plenty of counterexamples, but it seems like they would be exceptions to this approach.
 
Seems like sloshing the hats is a no-brainer here. Feels right to me.
 
I don't consciously slosh or not, but thinking about it now, I slosh more when I want a looser or 'dirtier' feel. I vary my slosh from none to slightly open to 'full slosh'. Now that I think about it, I rarely use the tightly closed hat when playing rock. I use it only if I want a very tight feel. In this case, the tempo is slower and feel of this arrangement is looser and has a 'dirtier' feel than the cream version. At this tempo, the tight HH with the open HH on the 'and' of four wouldn't fit as well IMHO.
 
@ Bo and Ben (the flowerpot men?) ... yes, it might have been the error side of trial-and-error.

@ Brent (BSquared) you're an engineer, I'm a retired analyst ... I like to left brain my parts too. The Cold Turkey solo was such a part - I wanted to stay on the beat and only vary the hat opening to reflect the solo's build up until I could bear it no more and just had to break out!

@ DocWat - if ever you and Jules end up at the same drum convention I dread to think how many coldies would be put away afterwards.

@ Brent (CN) Yep really ... it was arguably not an ideal choice, hence your counter argument :)

The way I feel it, the early verses would have benefited from closed hats (not super crisp, but more a chunky chick, as Henri talked about) which would have locked in with the piano rather than following the flowing guitar with boom-bap plus shhhhhhh. The open hats during the solo, on the other hand, felt just right. Until this clip I've thought of his playing choices as perfect.

BTW I think if you threw a stone in this place you'd stand a fair chance of hitting someone named Larry, David, Matt, John, Steve, Jeff or Brent :)
 
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