Skip to main content
Music Radar MusicRadar The No.1 website for musicians
  • Guitars
  • Amps
  • Pedals
  • Drums
  • Synths
  • Software
  • Pianos
  • Controllers
  • Recording
  • Buyer’s guides
  • Live
  • DJ
  • Advice
  • Acoustic
  • Bass
  • About Us
  • More
    • Reviews
Magazines
  • Computer Music
  • Electronic Musician
  • Future Music
  • Keyboard Magazine
  • Guitarist
  • Guitar Techniques
  • Total Guitar
  • Bass Player
More
  • Take our survey to win a £300/$350 Ticketmaster gift card
  • Type beats
  • 86000+ free music samples
  • How to make an AI cover song
  • Three-chord trick

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

  1. Tuition

10 steps to hotter hi-hats

By Computer Music
published 4 August 2014

Score a hit with our top ten tips for hipper hats

Hat tricks

Hat tricks

Hi-hats have been topping off grooves in almost every musical genre since their invention in the 1920s. Most of the time, a drummer 'rides' the hi-hats with a drumstick, applying pressure to the pedal to generate the 'open' and 'closed' hat sounds that give the instrument its expressive character. Open hits have a long sustain, with both cymbals ringing out; closed hits decay quickly.

The sequencing of closed and open hi-hat sounds forms a metallic pattern that drives a rhythm along. Synthesised 'electronic' hi-hats are usually created using white noise and filtering to replicate the sound and tone of the real thing.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to inject life, width, depth, dynamics and realism into your hi-hat parts, whether you're working with synth-based drum machines or realistic samples. Hold on to your hats!

Page 1 of 11
Page 1 of 11
Chopping the hi-hats out of a loop

Chopping the hi-hats out of a loop

Before we tackle the nitty gritty of programming hi-hats from scratch, let’s first look at using and customising pre-existing grooves.

Many producers feel that using ready-made drum loops from sample packs is cheating, but it’s actually possible to chop up, rearrange and customise hi-hat elements extracted from dense drum loops in order to make them entirely your own. These don’t have to form the sole basis of your own rhythm, but can just sit behind other programmed hits to add interest.

Start with a full drum loop containing a kick, snare and hi-hats, slice up the audio file to isolate only the hats, then edit and process them to help sit the groove behind your other drum hits.

Page 2 of 11
Page 2 of 11
Programming hi-hat 'choke'

Programming hi-hat 'choke'

A drummer can cut short, or ‘choke’, an open hi-hat sound using the pedal. In most dedicated drum software, programming a closed hi-hat note shortly after an open one will abruptly cut off the latter’s tail.

If you have one, it may sound more realistic to cut off the first sound with a ‘pedal’ sample. In your sampler, put all your hi-hat sounds in the same ‘choke group’ to have them cut each other off.

Page 3 of 11
Page 3 of 11
Velocity and articulations

Velocity and articulations

Drum ROMplers do a great job of recreating the sound and tone of a realistic drum kit, but you need to put in a little effort to replicate the performance and timing imperfections of a human drummer.

Program in velocity variations through the pattern, so that accented notes are at higher velocities and the notes in between are at lower ones, mimicking how a live drummer might play. You can also move certain notes slightly ‘off the grid’ to humanise the rhythm.

Some drum instruments offer hi-hat articulations that emulate a drummer hitting them in different ways, such as with the tip and shoulder of the stick. Add this variety to your groove by alternating MIDI notes, each one triggering a different articulation.

Page 4 of 11
Page 4 of 11
Brightening hi-hat transients

Brightening hi-hat transients

SKnote Snap is a unique and handy transient enhancer plugin. It’s part of the CM Plugins collection, included with every issue of Computer Music magazine. Applying it to a hi-hat sound lacking in the sharp sizzle that today’s music demands can work wonders.

Start with the Hit and Body dials set to zero. A very slight positive Body amount applies a high-shelf boost, while raising the Hit parameter increases the amount of transient affected by it, adding brightness to the hi-hat’s initial attack and leaving the rest of the tone unaffected. Thus, the character of the sound is retained, but that essential ‘snap’ is enhanced - an effect that’s difficult to achieve with regular equalisation or transient shaping.

Be careful not to overcook it, though -you’ll often only need to dial in subtle settings for slight transient brightening of your hi-hats.

Page 5 of 11
Page 5 of 11
Adding depth using subtle reverb

Adding depth using subtle reverb

In the real world, we’re used to hearing sounds reflecting off nearby surfaces, creating tight echoes – an ambience that dry hi-hat samples can lack.

To alleviate this dryness and place hats in the mix, add a tiny touch of short room reverb. It should only be applied very subtly, but it can add a professional sheen to electronic hi-hats.

Page 6 of 11
Page 6 of 11
Super-wide hi-hats

Super-wide hi-hats

To add width to sounds, many producers will employ the Haas effect. Take a signal, duplicate it, pan one copy hard left and the other hard right, and delay one side by just a few milliseconds. The ear will be fooled into hearing the two as one single, super-wide sound.

You can also use this trick with two similar - but not identical - hi-hat samples. Choose a pair that sound roughly the same, then pan one hard left and the other hard right. No delay is needed in this case, and phase cancellation is minimised because the two hats are different.

If you find this effect too extreme, try careful stereo placement of hi-hats through subtle panning instead - this can really inject width and space into the high end of a mix.

Page 7 of 11
Page 7 of 11
Removing treble harshness

Removing treble harshness

Just as excessive low frequencies can clog up and muddy the low end of a mix, treble and presence areas can often clash and build up, causing fatiguing brightness when several sounds compete for the same space.

The 2-6kHz upper-mid region can add bite to cymbals, but beware of excessive presence above that point - overdo this area and you could make your mix sound thin.

Saturation can add drive and remove shiny treble frequencies, bringing grit and bite to hi-hats. A dry/wet mix control is particularly useful in this scenario, enabling you to maintain the unprocessed signal’s brightness while blending in some upper-mid crunch and thickness.

Page 8 of 11
Page 8 of 11
Applying swing

Applying swing

Most DAWs offer some kind of swing function, moving the notes on every second and fourth beat slightly later for a jazzier feel.

Some producers swear by the captured swing grooves of old-school hardware like Akai’s MPC series and the E-mu SP-1200. Whether the swing functions of these machines are actually ‘special’ in any meaningful way is a debate for another time, but if you’d like to try them for yourself, many DAWs feature a built-in selection of old-school drum machine grooves to apply to your hi-hat (and other) parts.

Page 9 of 11
Page 9 of 11
Creative sidechaining

Creative sidechaining

Got a rigid and unnatural-sounding hi-hat pattern that needs loosening up? You could dive in and edit the volume and length of each hit in the piano roll or sampler, but there’s an even speedier solution to be had using sidechain compression.

Simply place a compressor over the hi-hat channel and set up another single-sound rhythmic loop as a sidechain trigger. The loop triggers the compressor’s gain reduction on the hi-hat each time it plays, ducking it and providing movement.

Page 10 of 11
Page 10 of 11
Real electronic hats

Real electronic hats

Electronic drums may well contain the weight and smack required for a punchy modern mix, but they can sound static and lifeless in comparison to the groovy performance of a live drummer. Realistic hi-hat layers add subtle energy and realism to electronic beats, bringing them to life.

‘Virtual drummer’ instruments such as Toontrack EZdrummer 2 are perfect for this sort of thing, being packed with human-generated performances that can add real character to an otherwise ‘electronic’ beat. Since many such drum ROMplers throw in subtle variations like a real drummer would, if you want your hats to play back the same each time, you might need to render them out as a loop.

Page 11 of 11
Page 11 of 11
Computer Music
Computer Music
Social Links Navigation

Computer Music magazine is the world’s best selling publication dedicated solely to making great music with your Mac or PC computer. Each issue it brings its lucky readers the best in cutting-edge tutorials, need-to-know, expert software reviews and even all the tools you actually need to make great music today, courtesy of our legendary CM Plugin Suite.

More about tech
StaffPad

“For pianists, it's a magical feature”: StaffPad can now generate sheet music just by ‘listening’ to your acoustic piano playing, which sounds like an AI-powered tool we could get on board with

Moog Minimoog Model D 2022

Moog Music breaks its silence on rumours of layoffs at its US headquarters: “We are looking forward to getting past this painful phase with renewed energy and enthusiasm”

Latest
Atmospheric space shot with sunrise

Modern life getting you down? Here are 10 atmospheric DnB tracks that keep the ‘90s dream alive

See more latest ►
Most Popular
How to get the sound of Abbey Road's vintage plate reverbs

By Andy Jones6 September 2023

How to perfect your kick and snare with Arturia's Neve 1073 emulation

By Andy Price5 September 2023

How to use the Pultec 'low-end trick' to improve your bass and kick

By Andy Price4 September 2023

Computer Music 326 Autumn 2023: free downloads

By Computer Music30 August 2023

The 6 essential acoustic guitar chord groups every player should learn

By Total Guitar29 August 2023

The 5 chord progressions you need to play 100s of songs

By MusicRadar27 August 2023

Practical music theory: 10 things every songwriter and producer needs to know about chords

By Computer Music23 August 2023

Use the CAGED system to play guitar chords across the fretboard quickly and easily

By MusicRadar22 August 2023

How to make a Gorillaz‑style synth string patch

By Dave Gale21 August 2023

How to use distortion to enhance individual elements of your mix

By Jon Musgrave11 August 2023

Ditch the pick and start fingerstyle today with three guitar chords and this lesson

By Total Guitar10 August 2023

  1. Gibson Les Paul Supreme
    1
    The Gibson Les Paul Supreme is officially back – and the most expensive non-Custom LP is as luxurious, lightweight and versatile as ever
  2. 2
    Bitwig and PreSonus’s new open file format enables you to save projects in one DAW and open them in another, but will other developers support it?
  3. 3
    7 effects pedals that synth players need to try
  4. 4
    The missing piece for your ultimate pedalboard rig? Universal Audio announces the OX Stomp Dynamic Speaker Emulator pedal
  5. 5
    The Vaporizer 2 wavetable synth plugin is now free and open-source: a commercial-quality instrument you can download for nothing?
  1. Harley Benton Fusion-T 25th Firemist
    1
    Harley Benton Fusion-T 25th review
  2. 2
    The Vaporizer 2 wavetable synth plugin is now free and open-source: a commercial-quality instrument you can download for nothing?
  3. 3
    7 effects pedals that synth players need to try
  4. 4
    "Everybody around me kept saying, 'Norm, you can't carry on like this'": Fatboy Slim's career in gear, from tape to Atari to Ableton
  5. 5
    Venus Theory sampled $50k of gear at a synth convention to make this free plugin

MusicRadar is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885.