Drums

Cymbal

A multi-mode metallic percussion voice: cymbal wash, FM-driven tuned hits, and resonant noise zaps in one module.

What is a Cymbal?

A cymbal voice synthesizes the sound of a crash, ride, or splash cymbal. The acoustic problem is the same one a hi-hat solves but a step harder: real cymbals are large, thin, irregular metal discs whose resonant modes are even more inharmonic than a pair of hi-hats and whose decay is much longer - sometimes seconds. White noise plus a long envelope sounds blanket-soft and wrong; pure tones sound like bells. The right answer turns out to be the same trick that synthesizes hi-hats, with two changes.

The first change is decay length. The same six-square-oscillator metallic-noise stack that the Roland TR-808 HH and TR-606 HH use for their hats is reused for the cymbal voice, but the envelope runs 400-2000 ms instead of 25-300, and the bandpass filter is wider so more of the inharmonic shimmer survives the decay. That alone gets you most of the way to a 808 cymbal sound.

The second change, on circuits that have it, is more partials and a brighter top end - extra noise mixed in for hash, sometimes a separate ring envelope. The result is a sound family that covers crashes, splashes, rides, and Roland TR-808 CY style 'cymbal hits' that are halfway between an open hat and a real crash. Some modern voices in this lineage extend further: an FM mode for tuned metallic percussion (cowbells, claves, agogos), and a resonant-noise mode for zaps and electronic blips. Same module, related techniques.

Our Cymbal

Webrack's Cymbal packs three modes selectable from a single knob: Cymbal (mode 0), FM Drum (mode 1), and Noise (mode 2). The cymbal mode reuses the canonical six-frequency oscillator stack from our Hi-Hat voice, run through bandpass and noise mixing, with a much longer decay envelope. The FM mode is a 2-operator carrier-modulator pair with a brightness-controlled mod ratio from 1:1 to 1:7. The noise mode is a state-variable bandpass resonant filter on white noise, tuned to the Pitch knob.

Eight knobs total. Pitch, Decay, and Bright reshape per mode. FM sets the modulation depth in FM mode. Noise mixes a layer of white noise into all modes. Drive adds tanh saturation. V/Oct tracks pitch - especially useful in FM mode for melodic cowbells and toms.

The cymbal mode is architecturally faithful to the 808/606 lineage; FM and Noise are extras that sit naturally next to it because they share the metallic-percussion DNA. Three voices in one slot, free in the browser, with a coherent control surface.

In a patch

Cymbals are accent instruments, not subdivision instruments. A crash punctuates phrase boundaries - the start of a new section, the top of a drop. Patch a step sequencer with hits programmed only on those moments, or a Clock Divider running at 1/16 or 1/32 of the main clock, into the cymbal's trigger input. Rides are different: they sustain through a section, hit on every quarter or eighth note, and become the rhythmic floor that a hi-hat would otherwise fill.

Two patches worth knowing. Layer the cymbal mode on top of Hi-Hat open hits to fatten the high end and add length - the hat gives you the 'tssss' attack, the cymbal mode adds shimmer underneath. And use the FM mode triggered by a step sequencer row sending V/Oct as a tuned cowbell or tom voice in melodic percussion patterns - a single Cymbal slot can play a whole bell pattern.

Inputs

Trig (gate) — Trigger input. Each rising edge fires the percussion.
Acc (cv) — Accent CV (0-10V). Boosts level for emphasized hits.
V/Oct (cv) — 1V/octave pitch input that adds to Pitch knob. Useful in FM mode for melodic bells / cowbell sequences.

Outputs

Out (audio) — Audio output at Eurorack levels.
Env (cv) — Envelope follower of the percussion amplitude. Useful for sidechain ducking or modulating other voices.

Controls

Pitch — Fundamental, 100-8000 Hz. Mode-dependent: cymbal = 4-8 kHz for shimmery rides, FM = 200-1000 Hz for bells/cowbells, noise = 500-3000 Hz for blip/zap center.
Decay — Amplitude decay, 20-2000 ms. Long for crashes and rides; short for bells, cowbells, blips.
Bright — Spectral brightness shaping. Adjusts highpass/tone in cymbal mode, modulator-to-carrier ratio brightness in FM mode, filter resonance in noise mode.
FM — Modulation index for FM mode. 0 = pure carrier (sine bell), 1 = full inharmonic spread for clangy metallic timbres. No effect in cymbal/noise modes.
Noise — How much noise component to blend in. Adds breath and grit to any mode.
Drive — Tanh saturation. Adds grit and squashes peaks.
Mode — Algorithm select. 0 = Cymbal (metallic wash), 1 = FM Drum (pitched metallic), 2 = Noise Drum (filtered noise burst).
Gain — Output level, 0-1.

Inspired by

The cymbal mode shares the 808 hi-hat's six-oscillator metallic-noise architecture but with a much longer decay and wider filtering, the same trick the original used to extend its hat circuit into crashes and rides. The FM and noise modes are extras - a 2-operator FM voice for cowbells and clave-like hits, and a resonant filtered-noise burst for zaps - so a single Cymbal slot can cover everything in the metallic-percussion family.

Roland TR-808 CY
Roland TR-606 CY

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