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| | <div style="float:right">__TOC__</div> | | <div style="float:right">__TOC__</div> |
| − | =="The Keeper of the Sound"==
| + | '''Group:''' [[Paiste Cymbal Type#Crash/Ride|Crash/Ride]]<br> |
| − | '''A 2007 Interview of Robert Paiste by Fritz Steger'''<br> | + | '''Type:''' [[Paiste Crash/Ride|Crash/Ride]] <br> |
| − | "An obituary for Robert Paiste"<br>
| + | '''Size:''' 12 Inch<br> |
| − | | + | '''Series:''' [[Paiste Super#Super|Super]]<br> |
| − | The origins of the Paiste company lie in Estonia. The word Paiste means " shine ", a symbol that continues today in various logos of the cymbal series.<br>
| + | '''Weight:''' ?g<br> |
| − | The Estonian born musician and composer Michail Toomas Paiste founded a publishing house and a music shop in Saint Petersburg in 1901, where musical instruments were also manufactured and repaired.<br>
| + | '''Years of production:''' 1964 - 1978<br> |
| − | The business flourished until the upheaval in Russia in 1916, when the October Revolution forced him to return to Estonia. In Tallinn, he and his son Mikhail M. Paiste began to design and manufacture cymbals for concert and marching bands.<br>
| + | '''Sound file:''' <br> |
| − | They made cymbals according to the Turkish design, which they preferred to the Chinese versions. During this time, he also developed the first gongs.<br>
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| − | The resulting instruments received awards and recognition and he began to export them to Europe, USA and overseas. Due to World War II, Mikhail M. Paiste was forced to leave Estonia in 1940 and rebuild the family business in German occupied Poland.<br>
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| − | The company struggled with the shortage of raw materials caused by the war and the difficulty of maintaining international contacts. Towards the end of the war, Paiste and his family left Poland as refugees.<br>
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| − | He then rebuilt his business in Brunsbüttel (Schleswig Holstein), Germany. The third generation, his sons Robert and Toomas, then led the company to the top of the world in cymbal making.<br>
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| − | While Toomas (b 1939 - d 2003) drove sales and was very present in public, Robert (b 1932 - d 2016) was the mastermind behind many of the developments and patents that gave Paiste its outstanding reputation.<br>
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| − | He was considered an introvert and lived a very reclusive life. In 2007, I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with Robert Paiste that lasted several hours.<br>
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| − | I met a good humored friendly senior citizen at the Paiste headquarters in Sursee, Switzerland. He spoke slowly and deliberately, in a sonorous, rasping voice with long pauses, constantly clarifying his own words: <i>('''Fritz Steger 2007.''')</i><br>
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| − | <i>'''Mr. Paiste, you were born in 1932. Can you remember when you first became aware of the cymbal making craft?'''</i><br>
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| − | RP: From the beginning, it was always there: I first noticed the rhythmic sound of hammering. It started in Estonia, when I was eight. Then we came to Poland, which was German occupied and it was already war at that time.<br>
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| − | In Estonia the school began as late as 8 years. Before that you went to a kindergarten, there one had already learned the first letters and numbers, but it was rather a kind of preschool.<br>
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| − | Because of the lack (of schooling) I spoke only Estonian, at home we spoke mainly Russian, my father (Michail M.) was born in St. Petersburg and later came to Estonia with his father (Michail T.). The first class with 6-year-olds was then not so much fun.<br>
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| − | I didn't know German well either and was torn out of my childhood, the first thing I learned while living in Germany was to shout "Heil Hitler"! At that time, one was not allowed to speak Estonian or Russian, but those were my native languages.<br>
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| − | That was forbidden by my parents because it was dangerous: If I wanted to say something spontaneously, they would say: "shhhhh, you're not allowed to, speak in German!"<br>
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| − | That somehow became ingrained in me, a kind of language inhibition that accompanied me my whole life, at school I eventually got caught up.<br>
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| − | At that time Dad only made brass cymbals, these materials were classified as important for the war effort, from time to time he was allocated some material, of course, it was difficult to plan anything.<br>
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| − | Then came the escape from Krakow Poland, that was at the same time as the Wilhelm-Gustloff* was sunk, we came to northern Germany (Jan 1945).<br>
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| − | (*)<small><i>'''MV Wilhelm Gustloff was a German military transport ship which was sunk on 30 January 1945 by Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic Sea while evacuating German civilian refugees from East Prussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Estonia and military personnel from Gotenhafen as the Russian Red Army advanced.'''</small></i><br>
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| − | There was nothing there at first, the capitulation (German surrender, May 1945) came pretty soon, and then there was still nothing. You couldn't buy anything anyway, then in 1948 came the currency reform: everybody got 150.00 marks.<br>
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| − | That was the initial business capital (for restarting his business) from which Dad then bought the first brass metal and made the first cymbals, those were Stambul and Zilko. At that point, Dad became ill and was in the hospital for a long time, the doctors gave him little chance of a full recovery. That's when I dropped out of school and learned the cymbal making trade, I was 17 and from then on I've been making cymbals.<br>
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| − | '''<i>Paiste was the first manufacturer to assign cymbals to to specific specific purposes, how did it come about?</i>'''<br> | |
| − | R.P.: Before the war there wasn't much going on with cymbals, there was the orchestral music but the musicians didn't really appreciate the cymbals. That really started after the war, with jazz and other styles of music.<br>
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| − | I remember that the Turkish cymbals were sold by weight, So 10 kilos of cymbals cost a certain amount. The cymbals were as they as they came: sometimes thick, sometimes thin, sometimes light, and sometimes heavy.<br>
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| − | We found that orchestra people tended to prefer longer decaying cymbals, which we called "gong cymbals", while dance orchestras, such as for the Charleston style, wanted sibilant sounds, that's how the "sizzle cymbals" (with rivets) came about, they also wanted "Charleston cymbals" (at that time the Hi-Hats were called that). That was in the beginning, later came other styles through jazz and other names like medium, heavy, thin, and paper thin.<br>
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| − | '''<i>Did you do all this hammering by hand?</i>'''<br>
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| − | R.P.: Everything, including the bell was hammered out.<br>
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| − | '''<i>At what point did you start using hydraulic hammers?</i>'''<br>
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| − | R.P.: I reckon in 1952 we got the first hammering machine, Dad had organized that, he wanted that.<br>
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| − | When I was learning to do cymbals, Dad said, "Look how I do it and do it the same way." I thought "Yeah , that's good, but it can be even better", he was the guide, and that's the way it is with hand craftsmanship: craftsmanship is never 100 percent accurate no matter how precise you want to hammer, no matter how exact you want to make it, some kind of deviation always creeps in. When the mistakes add up, it's just too much, hand craftsmanship is never final.<br>
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| − | He then set up the hammering machine and told us to work with it, but my colleagues said : "I won't touch that machine!" But I was interested, so I started to try. At the beginning it didn't really work, then I slowly got into it and learned how to use it, the others saw that I was much faster with the cymbal and it was hammered much cleaner, that's how it grew.<br>
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| − | That was good about my father: he gave you the input, the hint, he didn't push, but left it up to you to figure it out!<br>
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| − | '''<i>You then went to Switzerland in 1957, how did that happen?</i>'''<br> | |
| − | R.P.: That was a very important step for us, we had originally been “settled” in Germany.<br>
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| − | We were fleeing from communism and we were afraid that communism would advance further, we wanted to go to the USA at that time but they were working with quotas and the quota for Estonian refugees had been filled.<br>
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| − | So, we were stuck in Germany for the time being, and we quickly had to make something by ourselves in the post war period, but Germany was not our choice.<br>
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| − | We then thought of Sweden or Switzerland, at that point they were considered safe countries, from what I knew Switzerland was democratic, neutral, and centrally located in Europe.<br>
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| − | So in 1957 I went to Switzerland alone, my brother Toomas was 7 years younger and still in school so he couldn't go, I started to build cymbals on my own in a single room.<br>
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| − | What our family learned during this time was to build something new from nothing.<br>
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| − | '''<i>Here in Switzerland you then came out with a new series called the "Super Formula 602", how did that come about?</i>'''<br> | |
| − | R.P.: We had brass and nickel silver as materials in Germany. Both metals did not achieve such a tone or sound like 20-percent bronze. We were aware of that, but there was no way to get other material at the time.<br>
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| − | Since we had to work with a poorer material compared to bronze, we inevitably developed skills and ways to get the best sound possible; with bronze this would not have been necessary.<br>
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| − | In Switzerland we went to various metal works, they said that they could not roll B20 bronze, one metal worker then said they would try. they rolled a sample about 6mm thick, but then they were done, they were getting nowhere, they couldn't make it any thinner.<br>
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| − | I took it to several metal works but got nowhere with them either. At the very end, I found out that there was a small rolling mill on the other side of the lake (Sursee), I went there, but they too said they couldn't roll B20 bronze.<br>
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| − | One of the guys there then told me "We have a small rolling mill, it's empty, you can try it there yourself". He gave me a metal worker to help and little by little, I got it so thin you could make a cymbal out of it!<br>
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| − | We then made some cymbals and went back to the mill and showed them, the master was an older man and he couldn't believe it at first, but he saw the piece I had rolled, he said, "If you can do it, we can do it”.<br>
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| − | That's how our super formula started, we gained experience with the material and after a short time we produced the "Super formula 602" cymbal, hence the name Super, which we later dropped.<br>
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| − | '''<i>In 1966 you developed the flat ride cymbal, how did that come about?</i>'''<br> | |
| − | R.P.: The Flat Ride is the first and the last cymbal that more or less came out of a gag.<br>
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| − | That was with Joe Morello, he visited here once and at that time there were these new super-flat watches and he was fascinated with his new super flat watch that he just got.<br>
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| − | He said, "why don't you make a cymbal like that?" I wondered, what does a cymbal without a bell sound like? Well, we were making gongs, but I didn't relate to that, we built prototypes, which surprised us very much with the sound.<br>
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| − | '''<i>Besides the Formula 602, the 2002 series was another milestone that made Paiste a leading cymbal manufacturer.</i>'''<br> | |
| − | R.P.: In the early days of the Formula 602, we often had the problem that dealers didn't want to buy our cymbals. They said they were good, but they had the wrong name on them (not a Zildjian) that led me to deal directly with the drummers.<br>
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| − | I learned what they were looking for and what was important to them. We held gatherings called “drummer meetings” where we had our cymbals played. There were tryouts , discussion, questions, criticism, and that's how we learned what the drummers liked and didn't like. That's how the "Paiste Drummer Service" was born, which still exists today. Because we make the sound for the drummer. Therefore, it's his/her sound, not our sound, and not my sound.<br>
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| − | My great endeavor was to adapt the sound of the cymbals to the changing styles of music.<br>
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| − | In the 60s there were new changes in music styles and the drummers said they had problems with the cymbals competing against the big volume on stage. So, I looked for a material to do just that and found the “eight” bronze (B8).<br>
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| − | First we built the Stambul 65 out of this material, which would have all the parameters of the Stambul series. Then we built the Giant Beat series. At some point we combined the Stambul 65 and Giant Beat and drew the experiences
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| − | together and so gradually the 2002 was born.<br>
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| − | ---------------------
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| − | Return to the '''[[Paiste|Paiste Main Page]]<br>
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| − | Return to the '''[[Paiste Series|Paiste Series Portal]]<br>
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| − | Return to the '''[[Paiste Cymbal Type|Paiste Type Portal]]<br>
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