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I always thought hats were meant to cut thru the mix so best to use samples that were bright. But recently I have been thinking my hats stand out too much and don't blend into the mix at all!

My ears are so shit when it comes to trying to work out what pitch things are at so it is possible the hats are just pitched down in tracks I am comparing too.

See below for example.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLaNNRLR ... re=related

i usually just cut off the bottom end to about 300ish then boost a bit of the really high frequencies. but in most cases the hats are quite low in volume anyway so you just get the hiss.try sidechaining maybe?

dankaczmar wrote:i usually just cut off the bottom end to about 300ish then boost a bit of the really high frequencies. but in most cases the hats are quite low in volume anyway so you just get the hiss.try sidechaining maybe?

Sidechaining, why?

serox wrote:

dankaczmar wrote:i usually just cut off the bottom end to about 300ish then boost a bit of the really high frequencies. but in most cases the hats are quite low in volume anyway so you just get the hiss.try sidechaining maybe?

Sidechaining, why?

just a suggestion as to something you could try with the hats to make it cut through more, possibly to a 4/4 kick with no output or even to other parts of the drums. I know its not used in dubstep per se but it has brought out some interesting effects for me before.

or you could just turn the volume down.

dankaczmar wrote:
just a suggestion as to something you could try with the hats to make it cut through more, possibly to a 4/4 kick with no output or even to other parts of the drums. I know its not used in dubstep per se but it has brought out some interesting effects for me before.

Think you need to read my post again:)

The hats stand out too much in the mix! they DO NOT blend into the track at all. I have high quality samples and gone through loads and they just dont gel together at all.

See the link I posted in the first mix.

Something I am thinking of trying but its long.

Once I have all drums down try and group drums into freq groups and then re sample a few times with the same processing. It is an idea that I have not tried yet but it sounds long and it also means I have to have things right before I re sample.

dankaczmar wrote:or you could just turn the volume down.

Do not think you understand what I mean.

ah right, sorry I got the opposite end of the stick. My bad. err not quite sure how you would do that to be honest and I havent tried the method your wanting to. Hi hats arent my favourite of sounds.

serox wrote:The hats stand out too much in the mix! they DO NOT blend into the track at all. I have high quality samples and gone through loads and they just dont gel together at all.

just because the hats are "high-quality" does not mean they are right for the track, just because you've gone through loads still doesn't mean you got ones that are right. the hats in the video don't sound pitched down, they sound like standard hat samples. although i'm glad your actually taking the time to be bothered bout your hats, too many tracks have the most boring and lazy hats ever.

youtube is being a twat, playing 5 seconds of the track then stopping for 30 secs

but from what i could tell, they seem like the right samples for the track, i dont think they were pitched down too much either, seemed just right to me

dont think i can really say much more than that at the moment, cant really listen to it properly

I always thought hats were meant to cut thru the mix

There are no rules governing the way things work in this type of music. Some tracks have really harsh hats that do indeed cut through the mix and are generally quite high in volume, on the otherhand (usually darker tracks) tend to have rolling low velocity hats that are simply used to bridge the kick to the snare.

There's no right or wrong in how hats sit aslong as nothing is clipping of course. If personally you feel the hats arnt sitting right, there are a number of posibilities that you could explore:

I.) Velocity of the hats, are all the hats the same volume, this can often have the effect of a very mechanical sounding beat, where as hats with different volumes (or ghosted) can give the idea of movement to a beat.

II.) Do the hat samples connect with the rest of the beat samples?, spend a good amount of time picking your samples, the luxury with hats is that almost any sample with the right editing can become a hat, so If you don't have the sample you looking for (In your head, replay the beat and see what sounds right) simply create it.

A good use of effects can help you sit hats decently in the mix, for example, reverb settings can push the hat to the back of the mix or with good use of damping, can bring it foward.

symmetricalsounds wrote:
just because the hats are "high-quality" does not mean they are right for the track, just because you've gone through loads still doesn't mean you got ones that are right. the hats in the video don't sound pitched down, they sound like standard hat samples. although i'm glad your actually taking the time to be bothered bout your hats, too many tracks have the most boring and lazy hats ever.

Hats are very very important and that is the main reason 90% of Dubstep now days sounds like a pile of shit to me:) none of the drums go together at all and everything is hard quantized. There is no rhythm, no feel!

Astral wrote:

I always thought hats were meant to cut thru the mix

There are no rules governing the way things work in this type of music. Some tracks have really harsh hats that do indeed cut through the mix and are generally quite high in volume, on the otherhand (usually darker tracks) tend to have rolling low velocity hats that are simply used to bridge the kick to the snare.

There's no right or wrong in how hats sit aslong as nothing is clipping of course. If personally you feel the hats arnt sitting right, there are a number of posibilities that you could explore:

I.) Velocity of the hats, are all the hats the same volume, this can often have the effect of a very mechanical sounding beat, where as hats with different volumes (or ghosted) can give the idea of movement to a beat.

II.) Do the hat samples connect with the rest of the beat samples?, spend a good amount of time picking your samples, the luxury with hats is that almost any sample with the right editing can become a hat, so If you don't have the sample you looking for (In your head, replay the beat and see what sounds right) simply create it.

A good use of effects can help you sit hats decently in the mix, for example, reverb settings can push the hat to the back of the mix or with good use of damping, can bring it foward.

Thanks for all this but I am actually trying/doing that as it is. I play around with velocity changes, pitch changes and FX. I try different settings for each hit, I try grouping them.

I have all the big sample packs that I hear mentioned and loads of others but still the drums just dont all sit together.

I listen to some artists and there drums somehow just all gel together and I cannot work out how to do it.

I have a feeling I am on the right track when I said about exporting the drums into frequency groups and filtering them all together. The hi hats like in Synkro's tracks for example sound like really shit hi hat hits but with all the other drums they fit together so well! I dont get what they are doing to the drums to bring them all together! dont say reverb its more to it than that.

I'm finally starting to like my hats but I did used to hate mine, and couldn't work out why they sounded so out of place. Here's some tips:-

1. Sample choice (obviously)
2. Reverb/Delay
3. Flanger (this one is a new one I've discovered, just stick it on the hats bus and you're sorted)
4. Reference to other tracks. I used to think my hats were too loud in the mix, I was right. Compare them to other songs you like and see where abouts they sit in the mix

yup i feel they are important and i hope people can hear that in my music because i spend a lot of time on them. like yourself i feel most dubstep tracks are very lazy when it comes to hats, even tracks i like i can listen to the hats and just think they haven't really cared that much about them. personally though i don't use much processing at all, i let my choice of sample do all the word in this department.

Thinking about it Synkros hi hats remind me of Burials. Didnt Burial low bit rate samples?

Hmm, so maybe I need to re sample the hats in a bad quality lol.

try all these suggestions, As well as tuning all the individual ones so that they are sounding relative to each other. I also low pass my hats at 48bd/octave at like 17khz give or take

Depone wrote:try all these suggestions, As well as tuning all the individual ones so that they are sounding relative to each other. I also low pass my hats at 48bd/octave at like 17khz give or take

Youtube does mess with the top end quite a bit but they do sound like lp/bp to stop anything standing out too much.

Another tip I found is to turn your monitors down very low and if your hats are just about sitting below you snares in level, they should be in a decent spot in your overall mix, if they are the dominant sound at low level they are too loud in your mix.

serox wrote:Thinking about it Synkros hi hats remind me of Burials. Didnt Burial low bit rate samples?

Hmm, so maybe I need to re sample the hats in a bad quality lol.

Or you could wack a bit crusher set to 12bit and 2times downsampling, that'll add more grit to em.

Now if you're hi hats aren't gelling with the rest of the track, the first option to consider (as previously mentioned) is that you're using the wrong samples.

In the track you linked the hat's are not massively trebly so either Synkro chose hh samples that weren't that bright or he rolled some of the high end off.

Hope that helped.