What Are These Hi-Hats Doing?

[Eclectrophonic]

Hi All!

Quick question...

What are these hi-hats doing? starting at the beginning, is there a closed and an open hi-hat, the first being the closed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqR9XodCk_I

I also love the texture of them, what processing has been added? I think they're off the 909, right?

Thanks!

[Etienne1973]

I hear the following hihat pattern:

| x x o - | x - o - | x x o - | x - o - |

4/4 with 16th notes grid

x = closed hh
o = open hh
- = no sound/note

[CHOOS]

OK so I high-passed it and normalized the wav file attached in the zip

Its the standard open hihat in the "off-beat" or whatever the technical term is for in the middle of the kick drums.
and two closed hihats with some swing

download the attached file and slice the samples into individual parts and it becomes very clear what is happening.

GL

hahahahaha OK so we posted this almost exactly at the same time but the pattern above is exactly whats happening but it might help to listen to the individual parts

The two closed hats sound a little different

[Eclectrophonic]

OK so I high-passed it and normalized the wav file attached in the zip

Its the standard open hihat in the "off-beat" or whatever the technical term is for in the middle of the kick drums.
and two closed hihats with some swing

download the attached file and slice the samples into individual parts and it becomes very clear what is happening.

GL

hahahahaha OK so we posted this almost exactly at the same time but the pattern above is exactly whats happening but it might help to listen to the individual parts

The two closed hats sound a little different

Cheers to both of you. It took me a while but I got there. Dunno how your heard that so well.

So what kit did you use for your audio example, was it a 909?

The closed hats in the original sound different? sometimes they have 2 CH's where the first has a softer hit than the 2nd one. I'm using Propellerhead Redrum and each drum hit can be a soft, medium or hard hit.

[CHOOS]

couldn't tell you which kit but if you download samples from 505 to 909 it'll be in there but you could make the same pattern and cycle through them individually to see if you find ones that fit your song.

[Eclectrophonic]

couldn't tell you which kit but if you download samples from 505 to 909 it'll be in there but you could make the same pattern and cycle through them individually to see if you find ones that fit your song.

Good idea. Thanks.

Tell you what, this is a very well crafted song. On first listen you'd think it was easily done but far from it.

[Eclectrophonic]

How are the hit-hats processed in this track? I know he's just playing samples but....

https://youtu.be/rZesm8hT0vg?t=69

I tried hi-passing a 909 open-hat and slightly shortening the decay time on the hat but couldn't get it right.

[CHOOS]

why don't you sample the drums in this tack so you have the exact same sounding sounds?

Or do you mean the swing?

A lot of times old school hats won't be processed at all or sparingly

GL

[Etienne1973]

why don't you sample the drums in this tack so you have the exact same sounding sounds?

+1

... or if you need in general a bigger variety of drum samples then there is a great opportunity. You could purchase Samples from Mars Drums bundle for $29 right now.

A lot of times old school hats won't be processed at all or sparingly

+1

Or do you mean the swing?

+1

16th-notes-swing is so typical for 90s-House genre. You have 4 16th-notes per beat. 16th-notes 1 and 3 are straight and 16th-notes 2 and 4 should play to some degree with swing feel later in time.

[SoundPorn]

There was processing done on the hats for sure but it was a literal processing by process. The texture comes from sampling drums off a vinyl, these are drums that were recorded in a studio on high end mics then put thru the legendary compressors and mixing boards we use plugins for today, then putting it in ur Emu or MPC sampler which themsleves because of the AD/DA converters would change the sound. Not only that by MPCs especially had a certain swing to them by default. Then after everything was sampled an arranged it would be recored again onto tape and mixed in another console. So yes these hats have been around the processing block. I even asked one of these hats how much processing it went through, well his eyes told me all.

Today we can replicate it with the plethora of lofi plugins and quantized groove templates.

You need to check out the free Air Windows plugins like ToVinyl, ToTape, HighImpact, Drum Smash and a few others they're the absolute best at making things sound like they were naturally sampled.

[Etienne1973]

You are right, SoundPorn!

I agree with you if we have to work with a pure clean source sample these days then processing like you mentioned is necessary.

On the other hand very common in the 90s was using straight away a vinyl sample already processed (eq, compression, overdrive, tape, console and AD/DA coloration).

[Eclectrophonic]

Thanks for all the information guys. Just gonna check out those plugs SoundPorn. Intrigued.

[Eclectrophonic]

And now I can't get those plug-ins to work in Reason 10.2.

[Etienne1973]

Reason 10.2 Manual Page 363

... or are the plugins VST3? If yes, VST3 is not supported by Reason currently.

[atya]

You are right, SoundPorn!

I agree with you if we have to work with a pure clean source sample these days then processing like you mentioned is necessary.

On the other hand very common in the 90s was using straight away a vinyl sample already processed (eq, compression, overdrive, tape, console and AD/DA coloration).

Not to forget layering or stacking samples ... different hihats, closed over open, snares over claps, you name it ...