How to Get Live Sounding Flowing Hi-Hats (Cardiak, T-Minus)

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I know you know what Im talking about, I don't have an example on hand but I have a beat that would just sound better with REAL hats rather than a dull 808 sample
 
First off if I were you I'd be using different hi-hats from a variety of sound packs (thousands of good free ones on the internet). The next thing I would do is play around and just make a bunch of patterns out of your hi-hats. Then convert these patterns to samples, and after you got a lot of samples you can bring em back in chop em up and do infinite amount of combinations. To make your hi-hats sound more natural try messing around with the note velocity, or rather changing the volume of each hi-hat hit to as if someone was playing that instrument in real life. Add some effects; first with some reverb in the high end because if you the low end of your hi-hats with reverb it'll start to sound mushy (unless you want low end and nothing's already filling in the low end). This will make your hi-hats actually sound like they're being played in a room. Mess with the panning and maybe have your hi-hats pan from right to left, or left to right whatever you want its your music the possibilities are endless.

There is also a thing called swing, but I've never really ventured into swing in my hi-hats (percussion) just cause the type of music I make. Hope this helps :D
 
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I usually do that velocity trick with my hi-hats. Sounds kinda weird with reverb but ill keep tweaking
 
With the reverb you only want to apply a small amount, and make sure that it's only reverbing the high frequency's of your hi-hats. Don't know what daw or vst you're using but usually there's knobs to adjust what part of the frequency spectrum the reverb is going to (hi-pass, low-pass). Anyways that's just if you want it to sounds like its being played in a room and sound more 'alive'. Also if you're eq'ing your hi-hats its generally a good idea to completely take out the low frequency's, and maybe a little bit of the lower middle(maybe 200hz and below) if you want more room for the bass, kick, snare, ect.. I'm not a sound engineer or anything so don't take my advice as the right way to do it, but that's what I would do. 3+ years experience working in dubstep electro.
 
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I would recommend using multiple hat samples which are set to cut each other off, the best is the type of multi-sampled hats found in products such as BFD where you can articulate by triggering how open the hat is or whether or not you are hitting a hat with a stick or just closing it with the pedal....because it's the little things that make all the difference.
 
Im using Maschine. I have a free reverb plugin called ambience I use, turning the dry all the way up/wet around 25%. Still not giving me the proper sound Im lookin for. I have a feeling its the Multiple Samples because it just sounds too boring as is.

Major Scale said:
ezdrummer or addictive drums vst:

OR

Playing with velocity and slighty offsetting the hats (you will never get live sounding hats quantizing them) Helps as Well
Click to expand...

Bro how are those plugins and whats the better of the two?
 
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