Hi Hat/Shaker Production/Processing

[dannydawiz]

I'm curious about how other members of this forum process their hi hats.

Do you use reverb?
Compression?
Chorus?

How about the panning?

Do you pan them to left or to the right?

Do you pan the closed hats and the open hats in the same direction?

Has anyone gotten any good results with layering 3-4 hi hats on top of each other?

How about the velocity of your hats? How much variation do you like to create in between the velocities?

 

[steffeeh]

I find a nice sample.
I duplicate it, and pan then left and right
Then I detune them away form eachother a little.
Then I slightly alter the resampling settings in both of them so they get even more different from eachother.
If I find another nice sample, I do the same thing, but do opposite pitching in addition with wether the sound is panned left or right.
Then now when I have 2 different samples with both having duplicates, I add some slight delay to one of the copies on both, the first sample for instance the left one, and the second sample the right one. That way I can create pseudo stereo without worrying about phasing or unbalanced stereo.
I even do this with synths.
BAM - mega stereo!

I usually only layer 2-3 different hihats ontop of them, otherwise they start to sound more like noise and the sound loses its character.

All my percussive sounds are heavily processed, with distortion and compression to make the aggressive and snappy, etc.

 

[dannydawiz]

Nice! I'm going to try this out in the next track of mine and see how it works out. Anyone else out there who might have something to add?

 

[Free Spirit]

Nice! I'm going to try this out in the next track of mine and see how it works out. Anyone else out there who might have something to add?

I don't use reverb, I prefer delay because it takes up less space and accomplishes the same task. Unless I'm going for an up front, focal reverb sound like that in Backseat Freestyle by Kendrick.

Compression is restricted to just on the drums bus where I do a parallel compression set up.

The right chorus effect can sound pretty cool, I sometimes use ADT on mine.

I just use about maybe 5-10% variation in velocity, just enough to alleviate the robot-like sound.

 

[HERESY/KNOKK SHOPE]

I'm curious about how other members of this forum process their hi hats.

Do you use reverb?
Compression?
Chorus?

How about the panning?

Do you pan them to left or to the right?

Do you pan the closed hats and the open hats in the same direction?

Has anyone gotten any good results with layering 3-4 hi hats on top of each other?

How about the velocity of your hats? How much variation do you like to create in between the velocities?

Depends on the song.
When bussed/grouped.
Depends on the song.

Depends on the song.
Depends on the song.
Depends on the song. When it's my music (metal/rap) then 9 out of 10's time the closed hat and open hat are in the same direction because it's the exact same hat. When it's beats (rap/rnb) it's whatever.

I've gotten results a client or myself was happy with.

Depends on the song.

Shakers are a different thing however. I sometimes place them on one side if there is something on the other side that I can pan to compliment it or I'll place it to one side and then add a delay to the other. If not then I can automate the shaker to go from left to right (or right to left) with each shaker hit/note.

Left middle right
right middle left

or

middle right left
middle left right

Experiment and do what the song calls for.

 

[bandcoach]

I'm curious about how other members of this forum process their hi hats.

some truly interesting questions here

How about the panning?
Do you pan the closed hats and the open hats in the same direction?

yes but then I think like a drummer and so always pan according to where I think of the instruments as being within my playing field - I even go so far as to pan across the whole 100L-C-100R field and then sub group the kit back to a stereo buss and fix the panning so that it is 50L-C-50R on that buss - Ii.e. I use the wider field and then scale it back in the buss

Do you pan them to left or to the right?

I always pan from an audience perspective of a live performance of the kit - so for me unless the drummer is a lefty the hats get panned about 45R; probably 43R for the closed hat and 47R for the open hat (the sound from hats when open squirts out the back first before the upper hat fully lifts off the bottom one) - if a lefty then we swap the pan direction but keep the movement the same

Do you use reverb?

yes but only a very little - and usually tied to a larger approach to room/space reverb - i.e. used for spatial cues within a defined room/space more than anything else

Compression?

live hats maybe, sampled hats hardly ever but it is all relative to the needs of the current track

Chorus?

hardly ever use any time-modulation effects like chorus or flanging or phasing - though phasing is a favourite for that mid-70's Doobie Brothers/Fleetwood Mac sound

Has anyone gotten any good results with layering 3-4 hi hats on top of each other?

I try not to layer like that, preferring to find a single good sound - if I can't then I will re-sample the aggregate sound as a single sound complete with creative eq

How about the velocity of your hats? How much variation do you like to create in between the velocities?

the secret sauce applies to this one - human variation in velocities is about +/- 5 so I have a general random function that will apply this within a dynamic level range - I apply the randomisation at least 5 times, as many as 19 times (5/7/11/13/17/19 are all possibilities and are all prime numbers) to obtain a truly random distribution of values.

Then it may require further tweaking to add in accents to specific hits in the sequence
- an accent should be +5 to the current velocity value
- this breaks the random nature of the surrounding values and so stands out during playback as the required accent

If I need to ramp up or down the dynamic level I prefer to use a linear increase/decrease for the line until the new dynamic level is reached and then apply the same randomisation and accenting tweaks as described above

All of this can take hours to get right and may be better done using a pad based controller (more like the octapad/kat-pads hit with real drumsticks) or an electronic kit to play in real time

 

[MusicManiac]

some truly interesting questions here


yes but then I think like a drummer and so always pan according to where I think of the instruments as being within my playing field - I even go so far as to pan across the whole 100L-C-100R field and then sub group the kit back to a stereo buss and fix the panning so that it is 50L-C-50R on that buss - Ii.e. I use the wider field and then scale it back in the buss



I always pan from an audience perspective of a live performance of the kit - so for me unless the drummer is a lefty the hats get panned about 45R; probably 43R for the closed hat and 47R for the open hat (the sound from hats when open squirts out the back first before the upper hat fully lifts off the bottom one) - if a lefty then we swap the pan direction but keep the movement the same

A bit off topic but

If you have time explain how do you pan the rest of the drums

 

[bandcoach]

I am at odds with a lot of producers on this one - physical locations are the key for me, not some production formula that only works for a limited number of choices

kick is panned center unless using double kicks then we have 30L and 30R

snare is about 25R unless there are double kicks then it is center

rack tom 1 ~ 30R
rack tom 2 ~ 30L
floor tom 1 ~ 45L
floor tom 2 ~ 60L
crash cymbal 1 ~ 40R
crash cymbal 2 ~ 40L
ride cymbal ~ 55L

I might also have splash cymbals (50R) and a china crash (60R)

I have a celtic cross jingle-rine (tambourine substitute no skin just metal) that sits on top of my hats so I would pan that to the same position

for other percussion I prefer to use a song by song approach

 

[dannydawiz]

It's quite interesting to see that everyone processes their hi-hats differently. Maybe it's just a matter of taste. Especially in regards to things like time based effects such as reverb and delay. The processing doesn't seem to be as straightforward as something like a kick drum.

In regards to stereo, exactly how wide are hi hats generally? I know that the stereo field usually looks like somewhat of a funnel. However, there's mono, wide stereo, and everything in between.

Just how wide do you guys like things to be? As wide as possible without phase issues? Or maybe a little bit in between?

 

[HERESY/KNOKK SHOPE]

It's quite interesting to see that everyone processes their hi-hats differently. Maybe it's just a matter of taste. Especially in regards to things like time based effects such as reverb and delay. The processing doesn't seem to be as straightforward as something like a kick drum.

In regards to stereo, exactly how wide are hi hats generally? I know that the stereo field usually looks like somewhat of a funnel. However, there's mono, wide stereo, and everything in between.

Just how wide do you guys like things to be? As wide as possible without phase issues? Or maybe a little bit in between?

Hats can be as wide as you want them to be, depends on what you're going for and what else is being played. There are times where I've mixed live drums from the perspective of the listener. There are times where I did it based on the drummers perspective but in each instance the snare is always up the middle. I've listened to major metal bands where the hats were directly up the middle or close to it.

Listen to this:



and this

 

[HERESY/KNOKK SHOPE]

now listen to this:



Now if metal is not your thing check this out.



Hats up the middle, shaker to the left (not hard because other sounds are panned hard) and a guitar slightly to the right but not exactly opposite of the shaker.

 

[HERESY/KNOKK SHOPE]

and this



Hats and crash up the middle but percussion fairly wide with a guitar to compliment it on the other side.

Now, with my style of music (metal/rap) the guitars are panned hard 95% of the time. The hats and cymbals are usually no more than like 65 left or right but the toms (which are always going to go right to left for me) can be spread wide depending on what was actually recorded. The problem with a live kit, based on my experience, is when you have your overheads and you start panning tracks, like a hat for example, opposite or away from how the overhead tracks are panned. And it's tricky because if you try to gate a lot of the track you may end up losing some of the body of the kit and things can start to sound really bare bones.

The only "wrong" way in my book is doing something that the song didn't call for or you not having a reason that makes sense.