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It seems more and more recordings are suffering from brittle-sounding cymbals. Several years ago, I moderated a panel at the Tape Op Conference called “Preparing Your Mixes For Mastering.” We presented a list of the ten most common technical problems. One of the top offenders was “harsh cymbals and ice-pick hi-hats.” From my experiences and in speaking with my colleagues, this problem hasn’t gone away. In fact, the only time I don’t experience this issue is when one of two people are involved on a record: an experienced recording engineer (e.g., a full-time person with more than ten years experience) and/or an experienced drummer (e.g., someone in his or her thirties and up who has gigged more times than you have songs in your iTunes library). So what do these cats know that the rest of the world doesn’t? Well, there are several things, and I’m going to spill the beans for DRUM! readers. In fact, many recording engineers are in the dark on some of these techniques, so get ready.
The best way to understand the source of this problem is to appreciate how we got here. Not to start a story with “uphill and in the snow both ways,” but the truth is there used to be much less selection in terms of cymbals. What Zildjian currently calls its “A” series was pretty much representative of the market: traditional finish, visible lathe marks, all in medium to medium-light weights. Whether you played in a rock band or a jazz trio, there was a good chance that some of the same cymbals were used.


I can't really understand what this phrase refers to (probably because I'm no native English speaker), so the first part of the sentence is not really to me - please advise!