Dubstepforum.com

Hey guys,

I'm really wondering what people are doing to

a) get the sounds of thier hats
b) create the rhythms with thier hats

I'm never really happy with my hats when I try to use them, so I often don't i just use other random crap and throw it together with some strange effects lol.

I've been trying to carve some groove and rhythm with hats lately but I'm just not able to really get there. I'll check some little bitz DZ is sending me while I'm chatting compared to what I'm making and it's never anywhere close to the end result that I actually want when I'm programming them.

Is there some sort of fundamental ideology I'm missing around hats?
How do you pick the different hats that you use? Have a few you love - post them up!
What are just a couple common rhythms that might help me get it (if you can show me with text).
How do you eq/process them yourself to fit in with the rest of the percussion.?
Is there some sort of way to layer the different hats with eq, or do you tune them or something?

I usually work with breaks, rather than single hits, so I concentrate on the kicks and snares, and as long as the break matches the tempo of the track, the hats will do their own thing. If I want a hat layer on top of that, I just have them follow whatever the chopped up break's hats are doing.

Sounds lazy, I know, but I'm no drummer, I don't know wtf the hats do in a normal drumline, so I don't even pretend. Anything's better than straight 8th note hits imo.

I use mine mostly as subtle elements for manipulating the impression of pace.

Usually CHHs working the 16ths and then little fills of OHH at the end of bars.

The percussion is done with percussion, if I remember to put percussion in. Sometimes I don't bother.

Man no offence to you but i really hate these sorts of threads. There is no formula to dubstep. If you want to try and find one then I'm sure your tunes will start to sound like everyone elses.

For me i tend to start with a good kick, snare and then melody before i get involved with high hats. They can really set of a track and so i rather leave them until i've got the basics down because i dont want to stick hats into an empty beat because more often than not you will end up with too many.

Try putting a 4/4 high hat in once you have got a beat/melody going on loop. Then play around with different samples till you get something that fits nice in the mix, then start playing with the pattern. Dont matter what it is, if it sounds good then go with it.

I do exacly the same as Auan. With thousands of breaks on the comp you get all sort of matching hats & ghost snares. No way I'm wasting hours trying to get 2 hats working together.

The rythm depends on the track obviously but usually since they're part of a break I start keeping them in the same order but matching the groove given by kicks and snares. Then I go on adding more swing with ghost snares and more hats filling in the blanks.

manray wrote:Man no offence to you but i really hate these sorts of threads. There is no formula to dubstep. If you want to try and find one then I'm sure your tunes will start to sound like everyone elses.

Yo you're totally right.
Straight up. I appologize. I should just keep developing my own flavour.
I think it's good to learn from others, but you're right. I'm asking for some forumula to model. that's the wrong idea.

I just had 3 great ideas from reading this thread

unklefesta wrote:I just had 3 great ideas from reading this thread

But, none of those ideas relate to music in any way.

two oh one wrote:

unklefesta wrote:I just had 3 great ideas from reading this thread

But, none of those ideas relate to music in any way.

1) I should make some hats or something.
2) I should touch some ham.
3) Mmm, ham.

just pick 6 hats samples you like... and layer them and make a groove with it like you make a beat. try to play with the velocity and stuff. this should work cause it works for me lol

I find that the groove of hats comes from the processing.

By their very nature, hats are simple sounds, with a very short life, but due to their frequency range, they cut through a mix like a knife...

Things you can try to change the sound are...

Mono the hat track. Layer a kick with them, turn the whole thing up to fuck, then slap on a compresser.

Render the result, hi pass it back into a hat and layer it in NY style

...

Randomly move hats around and listen to the results.

Duplicate what sounds good!

etc.

And, to those who think hats take care of themselves; you are wrong.

.. Or you could be like Burial, and use what sounds like a recording of some hats off youtube, rendered to a 128mp3, loaded into youtube again, recorded through winamp and rendered as a .mov file.

Odd odd sounds.

i dont know... when hearing tracks with hi hat work i admire, it sounds to me that there are very sublte differences between the hits that help create the groove, similar to the sublties a real drummer creates. i havent had the time to dive deep into that... i usually like techno related hi hat sounds rather than breaks though... ?

i dunno, i do whatever. every tune is different

two oh one wrote:I use mine mostly as subtle elements for manipulating the impression of pace.

me too! thats a really good description of what i try to do. usually i have the levels on my hat channels turned down pretty low. i also mess with the volume of individual hits in renoise on each hat so that the level of the hat on the 1 is louder than the hat on the 3, which is louder than the hat on the 2.

TIC-tic-Tic-tic


etc...

this is actually a good thread.

i cannot get away from 909 hats. i love them.

pattern-wise, i just listen to the beats and textures and sounds, and put things where they build the most groove. no real formula, just using your ears.

sometimes i ease off the attack a little bit, do some panning to give it some room. just a SMIDGE of reverb helps keep it from sounding too dry (but be careful not to use too many reverbs on too many sounds or things get muddy). i also like a little bit of delay sometimes.

shit hats will ruin a tune

decklyn wrote:this is actually a good thread.

i've found this thread quite helpful

n has reminded me to work on my hats and percussion more

sapphic_beats wrote:i cannot get away from 909 hats. i love them.

you use samples of them?