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I've been doing some basic patterns but i wanna hear how people program their hi hats in their songs. Do you just experiment and randomly put them places or do you always know where you put them and just have a general idea where you would put them. I just wanna hear some techniques

I'll be the first to say I dont have the best hats on the forum, but I think each hat should either make its own rhythm when solo'd of be matched with another similar hat that both make a rhythm when played together. If the hat doesn't make you at least slightly wanna move on its own or in tandem with one other element of your beat, I'll scrap it and do another. The exception is the hats/rides that sit on the beats, which really control the pace of the track.

Hats can sound generic real fast. Varying the velocities or even better mixing different hats together go a long way to get a colorful little shuffle goin on. I think hats are a percussive element that you can get real experimental with and not have to worry about it sounding too weird.

i totally forgot about velocity i have to try that out and i always use like 2 open and 2 closed and switch them up all the time and one always has super delay

Oh yeah and hats are real responsive to pitch changes, so match that shit up!

Play 'em in, the only way.

Yeah big point! Accents! Google it, It makes all the difference. Do it to your kick as well, put a little shadow kick just before the 1st beat and see how much pace it gives your pattern

I use battery and the piano roll from fl studio just tweaking the sounds to get a dirty hi hat sound.

I use about 40 audio tracks to achieve a richly complex and layered sound in my percussion. Shop for sounds and just layer them up. use about 5 different hats, shakers, rides etc because varying velocity will not sound human or "real". A real hat sounds pretty much the same if you hit it with the same velocity but the timbre changes when you hit it harder or softer. Mimic this by using multiple samples. Drum Samplers may do this by using layered sounds and varying the relative velocity but I think it's more fun to work in straight audio when I'm producing.

Don't talk to me about hi hats lol I got critted for using the same patterns.

I honestly just place my Hi Hats in a certain pattern then play it out, check to see if it sounds good to my ears, if not delete it and start again, if its good keep it then start adding other percussion to fill up the space and create a decent drum pattern.

I use maybe three hat samples for my basic pattern, and rather than programming the hits in, I use the step sequencer in FL to draw in patterns over the three channels. When I saw draw in, I mean like make the buttons light up in pretty shapes. Way more fun.

If it sounds shit, delete and start again.

wub wrote:I use maybe three hat samples for my basic pattern, and rather than programming the hits in, I use the step sequencer in FL to draw in patterns over the three channels. When I saw draw in, I mean like make the buttons light up in pretty shapes. Way more fun.

If it sounds shit, delete and start again.

+1
I only use 1 hat sample, more of a bongo man really.

All about adding weirdy glitchy hats, pitching down and up aswell, closed ones with the occasional open and stuff like that

i pretty much always start my drums w/ just an upbeat pattern on that hats, and only make it more complicated if it needs it. I'll try muting it as well-- lots of killer tunes have nothing going on in the hats. Ed from the Glitch Mob is a master at making tunes charge ahead w/ no thin layers.

but, sometimes you need density up there....

If my scratch hats stay or are replaced, it's a matter of layers and cross-rhythms-- maybe a rattle playing full 16ths, shakers playing one particular syncopation, different-sounding shakers playing an answer pattern to that, maybe some real hihat, maybe some ride cymbal, ghosted snares, etc-- all variations on whitenoise. sidechain them to different elements as well-- some rise and fall w/ the kick, some w/ the snare, etc. Most drummers inherently play w/ an 'internal' sidechain, in which the hats get louder when the kick & snare are absent.

also a balance of fidelity-- some will be super-clean, some bandpassed, some bitcrushed. if i'm recording live perc, i'll switch up mics-- some get the super-sexy, expensive condenser treatment; some go through a $6 mic i bought on canal st.

ie, in this one, after the drop, we've got a 909 hat on the upbeats, an african rattle on the 16ths, LP 1shot shakers playing a cross-ryhthm that get a really hard flanging, a 2nd cross rhythm w/ clean shakers, a ride cymbal playing upbeats, and a hihat & snaredrum breakbeat i recorded together... sidechained to different things, then bussed together and compressed so that they push and pull a bit:




lately i've been using less 'drum' elements to create energy up top, and more synths. Predator's got some excellent starting points for arpeggiated noise that can be used as percussion. Especially when the other percussion layers are organic, having the opposite up top can make things translate better:

arp your hats with no pitch tracking. think girl unit. just a thought.

i start out with a pattern. straight, no dynamic changes, nothing. than i very it up changing the notes to different hats, shakers and other similar sounding instruments.

Depends on the tune, sometimes I'll play 16th notes with quantise off and then starting deleting notes to give the pattern more space and movement. Other times I'll quantise hats on each 1/4 note and play shuffled hits in between. The most important thing for me is making sure some beats are accented, generally by giving them a higher velocity than the non accented ones.

Check the Subscape computer music tutorial, the track he's working with in that video has quite a cool little groove going one with the hats and he talks through it.

gen_ wrote:Yeah big point! Accents! Google it, It makes all the difference. Do it to your kick as well, put a little shadow kick just before the 1st beat and see how much pace it gives your pattern

Benga is a genius at this kind of stuff