HiHat Squences and Programming

[blinx]

Just interested in what/how other people synthesize and sequence there HiHat patternz?
Do you use white noise based samples (techy hats) or real life based samples?
Midi sequence them or chop up realife sampled patterns?
Do you stick to a basic pattern the whole time? Switch for chorus/verse/bridges or write completely unique patterns the entire track?

I usually use reallife single hit samples and switch my hats up quite a bit to keep my tacks hopping about and not to get boring or to predictable. I have used hihat loops also and chopped them up for a few tracks. I guess im just not entriely happy yet with my hihat workflow so thats why im interested in seeing how other poeple do hi hats.

Any tips or tricks for properly using crash and ride cymbals would be interesting to know as well.

[ChadDub]

I usually just do a 4/4 either on the downbeat or the upbeat depending on what I want, and then I just random interesting things with them. You can (and should) modulate the velocity and fine pitch of the sample every so often to make it not as loopy and robotic. I also like messing with the panning and velocity for little fast rolls (example in my sig track, 46 seconds). Just little things to keep it interesting.

[ems_1t]

I always use velocity and panning. Like my hats nice and wide, some people will set it up like a drum kit, but I like to arrange the panning like a pattern. Its all up to taste and what you are trying to do.

Parallel compression really seems to bring out the brightness.

Been using hi hats off a a few pop sample packs recently hahaha

[Collyer]

Reverb them a lot so that they all fit together with the mix and arent too sharp sounding. sharp sounding hats take peoples focus if you aren't careful. don't add so much reverb that they all mush together, it's hard to perfect the level of reverb you need but if you get it right it's so effective.

Also, add a tiny (really tiny) bit of quite dry delay. it adds more energy to sequences

[GothamHero]

http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.com/2 ... -jazz.html

[blinx]

Thx for the link man ill check it out i love to read good stuff and never hurts to refresh my jazz/swing chops from college days.

I also like to use panning and veloticy to help my hats flow.

I use drum rack so its pretty easy to draw these in ableton.

Another question:

How do you mix/set levels for your drum machine or drum rack (im not looking for a golden answer of -db but a general idea whree you like elements to sit would be interesting to hear about).

My pref ATM
Snare = -8db ish
Claps = -8db ish
Kicks = -9db ish
hats = -12db ish
cymbals = -13db ish

This is where i start as reference point when i set my drum racks initial levels up.

[Mehlovich]

one thing that has helped me while strugling with getting hihats to be groovy is throwing shit loads of different hats into the drum rack, paste the sequencer with hats and start removing hats until it sounds nice. ofc mess with velocity and panning etc. while doing this.

I have tried parallel compression too, but I don't think I've quite understood it yet as it doesn't do much to my hats.

[1point5]

Semiquaver (16th note) swing quantization is an excellent tool for hats gives you that nice garagey shuffle

EDIT: Also, 909 Tambourine samples are fucking sexy

[hutyluty]

hats wih flange on every 8 bars


1-4-7-10-13-15 trust

[Teknicyde]

A selection.

Ill use some short, snappy, techy hats and run them on the 16s across like, half a bar, give them a dose of the reverb send, and maybe a bit of sidechaining with the bassy percussive elements (kicks, snaares, ect) Then Ill scatter in some real samples of closed hats and mix them in a similar way to the techy fake noise ones, to give a bit of life.

Open hats, I throw in for syncopation value on the downbeats, usually, these are real samples. Ill miz them a little louder then the closed hats, and give them a healthy dose of the reverb send, so they have a nice ring-out to them.

Sidechain hats like crazy, and alot of panning too. Cant forget the shuffle either. Swing those 16s around or gtfo.

Crashes/splashes... I use real samples always, will put a crash say every 8 bars and a weaker splash every 4. Big, big, big amounts of reverb here, and alot of the time, a delay as well. Really treat these more as a part of the risers and ambience then the percussion, and alot of the time, they end up bussed in with the white noise sweeps.

After all thats said n done, if I reeallly want focus on the top end, Ill layer sequenced stuff with a hi-passed and flanged break, and chop the shit out of it to get it grooving with the drums.. mix it in low, bus it with the rest of the hats.

[ascent]

depends on the tune. used to use strictly real hat samples but then moved to other percs and now i have started synthesizing them after listening to too much techno..
you get better control with synthesis imo
i can't use crashes to save my life so i just leave them out haha.
just click my notes in on 1/32 grid and can get plenty of shuffle. i like to have straight hats somewhere then other percs shuffling around them.. i also like to keep my hats simple

[BlackMath]

I use an open hihat and automate the sustain and decay. An open hh with no s or d sounds like a closed hat and you can get all kinds of nuanced variation

Another way is drop an impulse into a drumrack cell. Load all the impulse cells with the same sample
Make slight adjusts to envelopes parameters for each cell so each cell is a variation of the same sample.
Drop a cmajor scale and put a random midi effect at the start of the chain.

Use slightly dry delay for shuffley feel

[BlackMath]

Also in Live you can drop a groove into a blank clip space and it will become a midi clip with notes .
Select all the notes and move them to the note that you hh are on

[darigan]

I like to get a drum machine hihat to provide the main bulk of the hihat then I'll just pick either a soul, rare groove or dub reggae track and rip 3 hihats from that highpass them and layer them with the drum machine hats to add a bit of grit and give you a variation between the different hihats sound, yet still sounding like they all belong together. Then Saturation, EQ, Compression As for programming hihats I just solo them and use syncopation and ghost notes and just listen to it on loop as I am programming the hats. Also I like to add other high-end hi-passed percussion (shakers, brushes, wood blocks whatever) with a bit more reverb sitting underneath the main hihat line so it just helps add a sense of space with a bit more of a natural airy sound, fills out the high end a bit more and helps add more groove and keeps things interesting.

In the "Electrical Storm" track in my Sig you will hear the main brushs, but they wouldn't sound half as good or natural if they didn't have the hihat pattern underneath which you can barely here, its just something you would notice if you were A/Bing one with and one with the hihats. Theres also woody percussion, shakers and few other bits and pieces that you only really here when the brushs cut out in certain sections of the song.

And in the "New Dawn" track in my sig there is a lot of high end percussion all cut around 500Hz (apart from the main hihat line which would have more body around the low mids section), all that extra hihigh end, high passed percussion with reverb adds a nice air over the top of the track, and really helps the groove and keeps things interesting

[Kes-Es]

I like real samples, I also like cutting a hat sized bit off of a low attack sound and sampling it, doesn't matter where you take it from.

I always just play with the sequencing until I like it, it's usually not very complicated, I hate my patterns.
Haha