Photograph by Chris von Holle
Steve Seifried doesn’t know how many instruments he owns. The number surely runs into the hundreds, especially if you include the 60-odd cymbals crowding his living room.
In fact, cymbals are packed and stacked all over Seifried’s house in Mason. They’re suspended beneath the staircase and in front of the windows. Loosies are slotted into open cases on the floor and piled on shelves in the corners. They fill out the drum kit that occupies the space where you’d usually find a couch. Apparently, when you start making your own cymbals, they tend to multiply.
A classically trained musician, Seifried attended UC’s College-Conservatory of Music, finishing with a degree not in percussion (as you might think) but in jazz saxophone. Despite his cymbal fixation, his career has never been about one instrument. Instead, he’s fascinated with how they all work together.
Seifried runs freelance sound design for the Sycamore Community School District’s theater programs, and his day job is working in software development at the educational tech nonprofit Learn21. “I’ve always thought it was pretty funny that I spend the day managing huge data sets,” he says, “then go home and have this caveman moment with a piece of bronze and a hammer.”
Photograph by Chris von Holle
Cymbals have a problem. “Reputation-wise, a drum set is mostly drums,” says Seifried. ” I used to work at a music store, and people would spend hours picking what kind of drums they wanted and asking the price, and then say So the cymbals come with, right? Nope. Hey, funny story, the cymbals are going to be more expensive than the drums.”
Cymbals are singular pieces of alloyed metal. Other instruments are endlessly customizable, made up of wood, plastic, and metal components and all the requisite hardware holding them together. But cymbals just are. If they sound bad, there isn’t much you can do about it. You can swap in a new drum head or restring a guitar, but you can’t replace any part of a cymbal. And you definitely can’t tune it.
Add to that the fact that most cymbals are mass-produced, and you’ve got an instrument that often sounds mediocre. “Though there is a wide range of sounds that cymbals can achieve,” says Seifried, “only a very small portion of that is represented by the major brands.”
You can’t talk about cymbals without mentioning Zildjian. The company recently celebrated its 400-year pedigree, citing the moment in 1623 when the Sultan Murad IV of the Ottoman Empire granted the Avedis family the name “Zildjian,” or “cymbalsmith.” Fifteen generations later, the Turkish manufacturing behemoth (headquartered in the U.S. since 1929) virtually owns the global market. Even Canadian competitor Sabian is an offshoot of the original cymbal superpower; it was founded in 1981 by Robert Zildjian.
But with market saturation comes an almost predictable decline in quality. And the longer he played drums, the more frustrated Seifried became with what was available. “I’d go to a big-name music store and walk down the line and hit the cymbals and be like, Nope, nope, nope,” he says. ” And I got so sick of that. Why are there 50 of the same-sounding thing?”
Photograph by Chris von Holle
One local cymbal-dealer understands Seifried’s search for that distinctive sound. Charlie Andrews, owner of Badges Drum Shop in Mason, carries Seifried’s new and relathed cymbals alongside hundreds of others he’s curated from independent cymbalsmiths, vintage dealers, local drummers, and major brands. “There are a lot of people in town who have started to pick up on Steve’s work because he really knows what he’s doing,” says Andrews.
Seifried’s process of fine-tuning during production-listening and revising with each step- is what sets his products apart. “Each cymbal is a unique piece, especially when you’re talking about a one-man operation,” says Andrews. “You get buyers who are like, I’m never going to hear this exact sound again unless I get this, so that’s the appeal.”
Photograph by Chris von Holle
Seifried knows that he makes a high-value product. He isn’t shy about telling you that his work will be better than what you can pick up at the average music store. It isn’t bluster, but the studied conclusion of a born musician.
While he wants to see success with his venture, Seifried has more wholesome aspirations than global cymbal domination. “I want to make neat cymbals for the drummers in town, many of whom I know,” he says, “I want them to want to play them. I might be able to sell this set for $700. But who’s going to buy it, a collector in Denver? I’d rather sell to the drummer in Cincinnati.”
So why does Seifried make cymbals? “Because I can’t not make them,” he says. It’s an impulse driven by a life spent making music, something that’s fundamentally intangible.
When you hit a cymbal, he says, you create a sound that rings beautifully, but only for a moment. But when you make a cymbal-when you hand-hammer a piece of metal into shape until it transforms into an instrument-you can grab that moment back and keep it always within arm’s reach.
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