Haha, Tansea. My frist few seasons marching cymbals (for marching band and indoor) we didn't use gloves. So I got burns and callouses. I use to show off my bruises. Whenever I play hinge chokes I look at my stomach to see the marks. The humor is when another player runs up to you without your cymbals on and they go "You're playing your chokes wrong!" "What...how?" "You cut is too low." My junior prom I had a nice set on my arms from vertical orchestral chokes. My style of playing is East Coast with a little mix of Crossmen
As for the burns. I recently got burns on my wrists. My gloves are tiny so they don't protect my wrists like they normally should. We practice with batting gloves. They are thin with breathable holes in the hands so we don't get over heated. At the same time they have the mesh between the thumb and index finger that helps with the callouses. For performances (oh yeah, this is for Bush now) we use leather Drum Major gloves. They work but I'm a super tiny girl and so X-Small is too big for me but whatever I mastered the art of too big gloves.
I kind of like the idea of gloves, personally. I don't know if you polish and clean your cymbals before shows but we do. So wearing gloves and wristbands helps reduce the amount of finger markings and sweat on the cymbals. So gloves help for your hands and for the cymbals. But yeah.
Oh yeah. Sometimes it's the strap too. I don't know why. You may think I'm crazy but sometimes I just switch out the straps with new straps and I'm fine. .
