If you don’t want your hi-hat track to sound mechanical and lifeless, then you need to vary your patterns. This can be done with a few different tricks. First, alter the note velocities to create accents as seen in the left image. A good starting point is accenting the first of every three or four hits. Make the velocity on these hits higher than all the other hits. Second, set the hi-hat’s volume envelope to the following settings (and as seen in the right image). Attack = 0, Decay = just above 0, Sustain = 0, Release = 0. Now you can automate the decay time to make the hi-hat hit shorter or longer. This emulates the sound of a hi-hat being closed tighter or looser.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Expressive Hi-Hats”

1. Earp says:
   March 21st, 2008 at 12:02 pm
   
   

   Fantastick site here. Regards from Cz.

2. fede says:
   August 9th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
   
   

   thanks dude. your site is amazing

   I have a lot of really good material to learn!

   regards from argentina

   =)

3. steven says:
   March 26th, 2009 at 11:20 am
   
   

   ok thats dog

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website