How Can I Get My Hi-Hats To Sound More Realistic [Hip-Hop/Beats/Trap]

[atorrealba]

So recently I've been experimenting with different hi-hat patterns, velocities, and swing yet I seem to have EXTREME trouble getting my hats to sound how I want them to in Ableton Live 9. Nonetheless, I've been trying to find several inspirations for excellent sounding hi-hats and then I stumbled upon this:



Upon hearing this Shlohmo track I was blown away by his technique in manipulating the hat's post-FX sound. I understand Reverb and slight chorus won't cut it and stock audio effects just won't do.


So I am asking if anyone can help me figure out how I can get that type of realistic, bright, and non-generic hi-hat sound?


I would absolutely appreciate it

 

[Drtro]

Mess with the velocity, or record it live with a velocity sensitive keyboard to make it sound more natural than just turning down every other hit.

 

[Excio]

They certainly don't sound realistic, and he's not playing with the velocities in the hats AT ALL. There is a slight reverb (about 1 second tail) that he put on them, but besides that it just sounds like a typical 808 hi hat with a eq boost around the 10k frequency range.

 

[Drtro]

I don't really care how he did it. I'm not going to listen or copy it. I'm just sharing ways you can make percussion sound realistic, assuming we're talking about it sounding like a human played it, rather than a sequencer. You can adjust the velocity as I said. You can use effectrix to add reverse at the last bit of each hit to make then sound sampled. Along with velocity, you can play the down notes in a half step lower. It really depends with the sample you're working with. You can adjust the swing. I typically use the effectrix trick and play in 2 keys rather than just one with the lower key having lower velocity..