Drummers cross their arms to keep their dominant hand on the hi-hat cymbal, which sits to the left side of a right-handed player’s kit. Since the hi-hat requires the fastest, most complex patterns of any piece in the setup, most right-handed drummers reach their right hand across to play it, crossing over their left hand on the snare drum below. It looks awkward, but there’s a practical reason rooted in over a century of kit design.
The Hi-Hat Demands Your Strongest Hand
The hi-hat keeps time. In most popular music, it plays eighth notes, sixteenth notes, or syncopated patterns almost continuously throughout a song. That’s far more repetitions per bar than the snare, which typically only hits on beats two and four. Your dominant hand has better endurance, speed, and control for that kind of workload, so right-handed drummers naturally assign it to the busiest cymbal.
The catch is where the hi-hat lives. On a standard drum kit, the hi-hat stand sits to the left of the snare because the foot pedal that opens and closes the cymbals is operated by the left foot. The bass drum pedal is under the right foot on the opposite side. This layout means a right-handed drummer’s strong hand has to reach across to the left side of the kit, passing over the left arm that’s handling the snare. That’s the cross.
How a 1920s Invention Locked In the Technique
Before the hi-hat existed, drummers didn’t cross their arms at all. In the early 1920s, jazz drummers used a device called a “low boy,” a pair of small cymbals mounted just a few inches off the ground, clashed together with a foot pedal. The low boy kept time with the foot alone, leaving both hands free to work the snare and bass drum openly. It worked well rhythmically, but you couldn’t hit it with sticks.
By the early 1930s, inventive drummers and instrument makers started raising the low boy up on a taller stand, creating what we now call the hi-hat. Suddenly, drummers could strike the top cymbal with sticks while still using their foot to open and close the pair. This was a huge leap for musical expression, but it created a new problem: the cymbal was now at stick height, directly in front of the left hand’s territory.
Drummers had already spent years developing complex right-hand patterns on the ride cymbal. Rather than relearn all that coordination with their weaker left hand, they simply reached their right hand across to the new hi-hat. The technique stuck, and every generation of drum teachers since has passed it along as the default.
Why It’s Still Taught as the Standard
Cross-handed playing persists largely because of momentum. Drum kit layout hasn’t changed much since the 1930s, and most instructional books, videos, and teachers assume a right-hand-lead, cross-armed setup. A beginner who walks into a lesson or picks up a method book will almost certainly learn this way. The technique works well enough for the vast majority of musical situations, and it has the advantage of keeping all the standard coordination patterns (right hand on cymbal, left hand on snare, right foot on kick, left foot on hi-hat) consistent across different teachers, bands, and borrowed kits.
There’s also a simple ergonomic logic to it for most players. With the right arm extended across the body, it can comfortably reach both the top and the edge of the hi-hat for different tones. Trying the same thing with the left hand in that position often means raising the shoulder uncomfortably high or lowering the hi-hat so far that there’s no vertical space between your arms.
The Tradeoffs of Crossing
Crossing arms isn’t without problems. The left arm, trapped underneath, has a limited range of motion. Reaching for toms or crash cymbals while maintaining a hi-hat pattern means either briefly stopping the pattern or contorting around the right arm. Accidental stick clicks between the two hands are common, especially during fast or aggressive playing.
The posture itself can also create tension. The slight twist required to cross one arm over the other often causes drummers to unconsciously pull their shoulders back, putting stress on the trapezius muscles along the upper back and neck. Modern Drummer has identified this as a major source of chronic muscle tension for many players. Over long rehearsals or shows, that strain adds up.
Open-Handed Drumming: The Alternative
Some drummers avoid the cross entirely by playing “open-handed,” using the left hand on the hi-hat and the right hand on the snare (for a right-handed player). This eliminates the arm collision and gives both hands full, unrestricted access to the entire kit. The left hand on the hi-hat can keep time while the right hand freely moves between the snare, toms, and cymbals without ever needing to duck under or reach over anything.
Players who switch to open-handed playing often describe it as physically liberating. The hi-hat can sit at nearly the same height as the snare, allowing a straight, relaxed posture with no sideways twist. Both hands can comfortably access additional toms on either side of the kit. One practical benefit that comes up repeatedly among open-handed players: you never have to stop hitting the hi-hat to reach anything except the snare.
The list of professional open-handed drummers is long and spans every genre. Carter Beauford of the Dave Matthews Band, Danny Carey of Tool, Matt Cameron of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, Simon Phillips of Toto, and Mike Mangini of Dream Theater all play this way. So does Ilan Rubin, who has played with Nine Inch Nails and Angels & Airwaves, and Gene Hoglan, known for his work with bands like Death and Dethklok.
Why Not Everyone Switches
If open-handed playing has clear advantages, you might wonder why every drummer doesn’t just switch. The biggest barrier is muscle memory. A drummer who has spent years with crossed arms has deeply ingrained coordination patterns. The right hand “knows” the hi-hat, and the left hand “knows” the snare. Reversing that means essentially relearning the instrument from scratch, at least for a while. For a working drummer with gigs to play, that’s a hard sell.
There’s also the practical reality of shared equipment. At jam sessions, open mics, and multi-band shows, drummers often play kits set up by someone else. A standard crossed-arm layout is universal. If you’ve trained exclusively open-handed, you can still play a standard kit, but the ergonomic advantages you’ve optimized for at home disappear.
Modern gear has introduced a middle path. Remote hi-hat stands use a cable to separate the cymbals from the foot pedal, letting you place the hi-hat anywhere, including directly in front of the snare or to the right side. This eliminates the need to cross arms without requiring you to retrain your hand assignments. These setups are still niche, but they’re growing in popularity among drummers who want the ergonomic benefits without rebuilding their coordination from the ground up.
It Comes Down to Kit Design
The crossed-arm position isn’t a technique anyone deliberately invented. It’s a workaround for a layout problem that emerged when the hi-hat was raised to stick height in the 1930s. Right-handed drummers wanted their strong hand on the busiest cymbal, that cymbal happened to be on the left side of the kit, and crossing over was the simplest solution. Nearly a century later, it remains the default because the standard kit layout hasn’t changed and because generations of players have built their skills around it. Open-handed playing solves the ergonomic downsides, but the cross persists for the same reason most traditions do: it works well enough, and everyone already knows how.