I would like to hear about some Hi-Hat techniques you guys may use. I didnt spent too much time on hats, but wanna go more in-depht.

I play around with sidechaining the hats with the kick, every 1/16 the clsd hat, maybe subtle shuffle & light volume changes, thru the sidechaining thru a comp it gets much more alive.

Panning first hat slightly left, second slighty right again adds more natural flavour.
(I did this manually, with two hat tracks, not thought about using a plugin for panning effect, guess there‘s myriads that can do it , just a click and done, let me know which did it for you?

Subtle 12 db slope low cut may be a nice thing as well.

Please add some!

 

This, as so often, depends a lot on the genre.

In Rock you can use two different hh in two different pan positions, but you won't hardly play 1/8th notes alternating on these two. Also the lowcut is mostly, but not always, lower than in EDM. Especially different velocities and stroke types are key in Rock (apart from that annoying groove-thing, ofc).

In EDM closed and open hh often have opposite pan position and are even played at the same time (a bit difficult in Rock). Lowcut is usually higher, sometimes only a high sizzeling sound is left (sadly, this can happen in Rock, too).

If you want to alternate the 'volume' I'd do this with velocity, not sidechaining, unless you're looking for a special effect, ofc.

 

Use Round Robin Technique

 

im hip hop base so i got a few hat tricks up the sleeve

for a mono sample hats i'd throw a pitch harmonizer with automation for parts id want that excitement width and use my delay plugin to send a fast dly for dribbling the hats within the same aux and pan the delays to fit the tempo also automate that too for variety of different dribble and pitch shifts

 

I ll try to do so, Battery seems a good start, seems to have a Round Robin function!
Thx

 

Little thing, but can have great impact:
Take your hats- track and push it a handfull of milliseconds to the right in your DAW, the kick transients gets more shine, and the overall groove can get more balanced

 

Highpass, slights saturation, EQ and ducking to kick/snare.

 

whats that pls explain thanx

 

cool tip thanx , what does the ducking do? pulls the volume back when the kick/snare hits ?

 

Found this explanation little quick:
„Round robin is where you can set two or more samples up for use on a pad or note. As you play the instrument it shuffles through and plays a different loaded sample with each triggering.“

 

Sidechaining!?

 

Yes. Hihat ducks a bit when kick and snare hits (side-chain compression).

 

Last edited: Feb 3, 2019

Yeah,good idea the harmonizer.Flanger and chorus work well with hihats too,they give some movement.And room reverbs,delays.

Hipass the hihats can be tricky to remove everythig under 100Hz but too much hipass is not good;usually hihats have important informations around 250Hz.

 

I often put a bit of swing 5% to 15% to the hihats.

 

Cool thread!

 

-You can process Hi-hats with: Distortion, Guitar amps&cabinets, Ring modulators, Freqshifters,Pitchshifter,Tremolo,Lofi,... reverse, altern lenght.

-You can use Hi-hats for layering.

-Hi-hat definition: Cutting the high frequencies from a hi-hat seems like a counterintuitive idea. However, hi-hat samples can often be over-processed and contain too much fuzzy top end. One way to fix this is to round of the frequency at the very top end. Use a low pass filter around 14-18kHz until the hi-hat regains definition. This technique may also work for snares, rides or cymbal crashes.

-Arpeggiated Hi-Hats: A great technique to come up with interesting hat rhythms is to use an arpeggiator. Use a MIDI arpeggiator (such as Xfer Cthulhu) as a source to trigger your hat samples. You can create interesting rhythm and velocity automations making your hats groovy and alive.

-Perfect Stereo: use similar samples, panning one for hard Left another hard right.

-Haas effect.

-Alter pitch, velocity, swing,...

-Define choke groups

 

Last edited: Feb 3, 2019

Yes bro' with battery you can "humanize" your samples, i make dub, to have a more real human feeling it's a great option. This option act, on timing and velocity of samples if i'm not wrong, you can read the manual for complete information about that

 

Groove Agent 4/5 has Round Robin too.

 

this is an ableton vid.
But can be done with all DAW and all sort of drums.

 

Soundtoys - echoBoy

my favorite weapon for hi-hats and melodies