Thread: explaning zills

I have been working at getting my students to play on the beat---haven't been correcting their finger and zills placement for a while. One of the students told me the "clacking " was annoying and shouldn't they be learning good technique? so i researched today--found this--

From Saqra--Place your cymbals on your fingers so they touch flat face to face when you bring them together, then rotate your thumb zill down a little around your finger -- this aids in getting them to ring by ensuring they are NOT hitting each other flat. Strike your zills together and pull them apart quickly to check you have a good ringing tone. Your left hand will want to clack instead of ring -- keep an eye on your sneaky non-dominant hand. (Clack would be the zills hitting each other flat edges together/what Saqra is recommending is to have the edges hit each other perpendicular to each other/Taji)

I checked myself---my sneaky non-dominant hand was clacking!!!

i looked at alot of youtubes and tutorials, i saw alot of great zilling and quite a bit of clacking. My intent is to have my students and i play ring mostly----we'll get to the other tones later.

What do the rest of you teach?

I have been taught and follow that the proper sound comes not from pulling apart, but from striking carefully with the zills making full, flat contact, instead of banging the zills forcefully together. I.e., it is not the position of the zills, it is how they make contact. Personally, I like a more wooden sound and clacking, my ears start ringing from ringing zills, so I play muted and closed on purpose, but can easily change to an open ring.

In general, having relaxed hands is crucial for getting the right sound - and that's just not something that comes easily; for me practice, practice, practice and then some more practice did the trick.

My first teacher taught the ringing style, and the second the clacking style. It was disorienting at first to switch to the duller sound after having been told that anything short of a clear ring was wrong, but everyone in my area claims the clacking sound is the older and more authentic style. Mesmera, who did Harry's video, uses both styles when she plays, and I've sort of adopted that--not always the clack=doum/ring=tek model, but whatever I think suits the song and the acoustics of where I'm playing. If there's a lot of echo in the room, too much ringing is headache inducing.

The book the Dancing Cymbalist by Jenna Woods is an interesting resource that goes into great depth on the different sounds and how they relate to how, where, at what angle, with which emphasis one strikes the zills. It's a super-fun read for the serious geek ;-) And, from the clips she has online, she really knows what she writes about, I enjoyed her playing a lot and would study with her in an instant if I lived near her.

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DonnaDiva, helloooo, where are you? She could say a lot on this but I bet she's getting ready for Northern Lights!

I did not like the sound I was getting from my zills until I learned a trick from Donna: put the zills on and then press your hands against a flat surface. This helps set the angle (similar to the trick above).

However, I don't like all of my zills to ring. It gives me a headache. So I always muffle my middle-finger zills by putting my ring finger on the back of the zill.

When I had a zill class with Karim Nagi he put a lot of emphasis on getting the different sounds out of the cymbals. Artemis Mourat did too. But I am still having enough to do dancing and playing at the same time without adding the complexity of varying the sound. They are both masters!

Oh- I am such a zill addict!
There are several ways to get a mute or a clap- I keep them off center & not quite flat too- we usually start with open rings because it is harder to achieve, then add claps, mutes, clicks as appropriate.

One thing I really wish everyone would teach MORE right from the very beginning is how to change the volume no matter which striking style you use. Rings do not have to be headache inducing if you know how to ring quietly!

I teach my students to play the whole range of sounds - the zills are capable of many different rings, some soft, some very - well - ringing:) they can be clacked or clicked, so forth - depends -

Also - students overlook what might seem obvious. Example - leaving long elastic ends so the zills aren't hitting each other but rather the elastic, obviously they sound lousy. Or, if they aren't tight enough or placed properly on the hands, they also won't sound good. So sometimes you are hearing something really dreadful and you know they're really good zills and it turns out to be something silly like elastic - it's worth taking a quick peek:)

oops - getting used to new bhuz:) sorry!

Oops - double post - sorry!

Originally Posted by taji-dancer

I have been working at getting my students to play on the beat---haven't been correcting their finger and zills placement for a while. One of the students told me the "clacking " was annoying and shouldn't they be learning good technique? so i researched today--found this--
What do the rest of you teach?

How helpful of your student! ,r:;
I only teach rings & muted clacks, and claps. That's because I'm usually having more than one student/performer play at a time & anything fancier like ticks or slides is going to be lost or just messy. If someone works out a solo with various sounds that's great, but I doubt my student ensemble will have the clarity of precision you need for the little sounds.

I always have to teach the students to strike the cymbals together with more force; they tend to hit the cymbals together weakly and when you do that the cymbals wobble against each other & create messy distortions. I have them hit "straight on" and no sliding, I find that at faster speeds the slides can get one cymbal caught behind the other.

I'm sure you probably know my cymbal videos but just in case -
how to play cymbals or zills playlist

Oh- just remembered- in distinguishing a ring from a clap, I tell students to think of bouncing the fingers off each other. This is how I was taught drum/percussion on different instruments, so it made sense to transfer the terminology, and it seems to have helped! "striking" (tho technically the correct term) tends to lead to over zealous and loud playing, whereas bounce gets that same idea across, but you can 'bounce' lightly. I usually get at least a smile when I chant "tip-toe, tip-toe, tip-toe" as we practice rolls at slow speed!

We learn about the various sounds the cymbals can make and try out the technique for each one. When folks are just beginning to figure out how to walk and zill at the same time, I don't correct for sound quality -- heck, I'm happy they are walking and attempting to zill. As folks become more comfortable playing the cymbals, I ask that they work themselves away from the "clack" and work on a more "ringing" tone.

I don't think that the "clack" is necessarily a bad thing, but it probably should be tempered with more attention to purposeful sound production.

Actually, now that I think about it, I think my default is a bit "clack-y" -- I generally use true "ringing" for more delicate playing. Hmmmm . . . I have to think about this!

And, in reference to Lara L and "bouncing" the zills off each other to achieve a nice ringing tone: I've used that same imagery, but not consistently. Thanks for the reminder!

Deborah

With beginning students, I have them start with hands in front, palms up, hands relaxed so they gently curl in. That makes the thumb zil bounce against the finger zil at the kind of angle Saqra is describing, and it also assures a proper wrist alignment. New dancers can accidentally strain their wrists if they try to practice zils with tense arms out in front. Without explicit instruction, they tend to want to push the wrists down and the zils facing out--major tendon strain!

thanks for all the info----just tried the laying the hand flat on the desk, gives a little angle to the thumb zill. i think this will work for my class right now. and to try to bounce the zills off each other.

I was taught the ring or basic strike, clicks and clacks ["clamshell"] (softer & louder), the clap, the muted; but we mainly played the ring. Also (for ring or basic strike) to bring the middle finger to the thumb, not smack them together, not bring thumb to middle finger. I looooove playing zills, I wish I could get more students interested in them. Back in the day, they were part of all bellydance classes. We had warm up, isolations, drills, zill drills, steps, combos, improv.
I still incorporate some zill work even though most of the funster students have no interest. At least they get the exposure to them. I'll do a zill dance choreo for classes every other semester or so.
I like Joynan's zill playing tape cassette. Don't even know if it is on dvd...
And ditto about showing how to adjust volume depending on the power behind the strike.

There are three basic sounds that zills can make (and variations of these) that I think should be taught early on once zills are introduced: the ring, the tick, and the clap.

Ringing sound is created as you described, Taji, hitting zills together slightly off-center (the place-hands-on-desk method works well) but also releasing immediately (if you don't it will have a bit of clack). All 'backup' fingers stay off and away from the zills.

For the other two sounds, the pointer and ring finger sit atop the zill to muffle the sound.

Ticking is best created by using the thumb to hit the side of the middle finger zill (which really is counter-intuitive if you've been playing with your finger doing most the work for quite some time). This allows you to have somewhat open, pretty hands instead of little bear paws while playing. :)

The clapping sound is made by clamping the zills together (with pointer and ring pressing onto top zill) and not releasing immediately.

Mixing different zill sounds can be used to emphasize both music and movements in a most impressive way! For more info on these I'd suggest coming up to Jenna's Tuesday DG class if you can make it - she's working on a fantastically challenging chifti zill choreo that uses all of these sounds in a bevy of patterns combined with lovely Jenna moves. ..g.:

oh! I meant to mention that it might be easier to get students zilling on the beat when you use tics or claps initially, so that it's precise and you can really hear what they're doing and who's "off" without getting a headache from all the ringing. :)

Thanks, all and esp. Nasila. i teach on Tuesdays myself, maybe i can come when i take a break at Xmas, i'm not surprised that Jenna teaches it cause i know she trained in all of that in New York. My better students go to Khoury's and dance and mostly play their zills so that is what i have been focusing on, especially cause i know hardly anyone teaches that in this area besides my teacher Tonya( that i know of--there might be someone out there that does.)I have seen video of Ozma mixing the tones together while dancing live, most impressive. When Karim Naji was here at Cairo Carnivale a few years ago, i didn't know who he was so i didn't do class. Right now i have to remember to practice my own fast zills cause i keep doing them slowly for my class.

"Belly dance" is a western term properly applied to raqs sharqi, which is the Arabic for "oriental dance", but strictly a style developed in the interbellum period for professional performance in cabarets and the early Egyptian film industry on the basis of traditional Egyptian dance, by Samia Gamal, Tahiya Karioka, Naima Akef and others..

Originally Posted by taji-dancer

Your left hand will want to clack instead of ring -- keep an eye on your sneaky non-dominant hand. (Clack would be the zills hitting each other flat edges together/what Saqra is recommending is to have the edges hit each other perpendicular to each other/Taji)

I checked myself---my sneaky non-dominant hand was clacking!!!

What do the rest of you teach?

I actually find it's my dominant hand that wants to clack because it's stronger and therefore wants to strike harder. For playing with "ring" instead of "clack" I have to be really focused on striking and releasing immediately on that dominant hand.

?? um, thanks for resurrecting this thread -

Originally Posted by alizasuzyen

"Belly dance" is a western term properly applied to raqs sharqi, which is the Arabic for "oriental dance", but strictly a style developed in the interbellum period for professional performance in cabarets and the early Egyptian film industry on the basis of traditional Egyptian dance, by Samia Gamal, Tahiya Karioka, Naima Akef and others..