Peter Szendofi is one of the most talented professional drummers, composers and most frequently employed musicians in Hungary, whose reputation as an educator crossed the Hungarian borders long ago. He teaches at Galileo University Guatemala, North Karelia University Finland and Drummers Collective, New York. He is also a member of the Drum Set Committee of Percussive Arts Society. As a musician, Peter has played on about 130 albums, and has performed with Loop Doctors (with Gary Willis and Brandon Fields), Fusio Group, Trio Ricardo, Subjective Symptom, and Eastwing Group, among others. He has also done a video for the widely popular Drumeo channel.
Peter is busy conducting drum clinics, workshops, courses and master classes all over the world. He has also visited Poland with those in mind, one of which was organized by us – www.beatit.tv. We invited him to Poznań, Poland, to do a drum clinic at the Republika Rytmu music school.
We took the opportunity to interview the man in-depth so that our viewers can also get at least a tiny bit of this great drummer’s knowledge and experience. In the third part, we talk about his collaboration with Bosphorus Cymbals.
Peter Szendofi is is an international artist endorser for Tama Drums, Bosphorus Cymbals, Remo Drumheads, Regal Tip Sticks and Humes&Berg Cases.
Peter Szendofi talks to BeatIt, Pt. 3
At the beginning, I had some crappy cymbals like Amati, Tacton or something. In 1993, I got an offer from the Hungarian Zildjian distributor to be an official endorser. I got a whole set of cymbals for free. That was fantastic! A huge difference comparing to the previous ones. I was with Zildjian until 2010, so it was 17 years. Zildjian distribution in Hungary had been changed several times by then. At the time, it wasn’t too good.
When Bosphorus guys contacted me i 2010. They said they had checked my stuff and liked it very much and invited me to join them. I thought: ‘Why not? Let’s check the cymbals’. One of the guys from the factory came to Hungary to meet me and some other drummers. He had a huge bag of cymbals with him and they were great. I picked a small set of cymbals – two ride cymbals, a crash and a hi hat. I took it back home, started to test them and they were absolutely amazing. Those guys are great and professional people. They can make beautiful cymbals. A couple of months later, I went to the factory and chose a couple of other cymbals. Then, we started to talk about a special signature series. We started working on something new. I told to the guys in the factory I wanted cymbals especially for drum and bass, jungle beat music. At the time, no company had a whole series of cymbals for this kind of music. Zildjian had some, Sabian had some effect cymbals, but there was nobody making a full cymbal set. We started figuring out what kind of ride, crashes, hi hat and effect cymbals it should be. I went to Istanbul a couple of times and we spent a couple of days on it each time. Then, I would take the prototypes to Hungary and test them in sound studios. I’d send them feedback, like, what kind of thing I wanted to change. Then, I went back to Istanbul a couple of months later. It was a process that took 18 months.
My Bosphorus signature series came out a year before that. In my set, I use my signature Bosphorus hi hat, ride and crash plus the previous Stanton Moore Trash Crash. The hi hat is a Bosphorus 13” Peter Szendofi Signature with a huge cup on both sides. The bottom is really thick, just like a bell. This gives the cymbal a more „nosy” sound and the hats together sound sharp. This fits the really fast drum and bass thing really well. The top cymbal is thin, lathed and hammered. The crash is a Bosphorus 18” Peter Szendofi Signature – lathed on the upside, natural on the inside. It has deep hammering marks and produces a sound which is somewhere between a china and a crash, so it’s a kind of an effect cymbal. The other crash is the opposite – a full crash with a clear, bright sound. Both of them are thin because I prefer thin crash cymbals. The ride is a 21” Bosphorus Rough Ride. It has a dry sound, a bit trashy because of its four humps. The effect cymbal is a 12” china. The edge is really thin, but the inside is much more thicker, hammered and with six holes. It also gives a kind of trashy effect type thing. It’s also good as a trash hi hat to play fast stuff, but it’s also great for soloing and linear patterns because the decay is quite short.
Drummers and Drummerettes! Here is Peter Szendofi in the third part of an exclusive interview for www.beatit.tv!
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