Getting your hats to sound smooth, not sharp

i know you need to get a good sample choice, but i never seem to be happy with my hi hats, i wonder if im over thinking this ?

this is a great example of what i would like to aim for,

Traxsource

RedSoul Ft Carla Prather Save Me Sean McCabe Remix - YouTube



i try to avoid loops so i can control my drums and edit each drum how i want,

but im starting to think maybe i need to use loops for tops, trouble is most are very

muddy and you can hear they are just filtered to try and remove the kick,snare,



what sample source is being used on the 2012 deep house tutorial ?

not to be rude but since joining this forum, no one seems to offer any advice on any topic i post, guess its back to Kvr then

Noticed the lack of activity, but I try my best to answer.

There are a few things to get the sound.

  1. EQ the hats. Remove the harsh sounding frequencies
  2. Change the start of the sample. If you use Ableton and Impulse you can use the Soft knob or start to do this.
  3. Compress the group (if you group the percussive elements) to even things out. But not too much.

Sometimes I’ll add a short simple reverb to my hi-hats to send them more towards the back of the mix as well as soften them at but I feel like a lot of times it depends mostly on the sample you use

Think a subtle bit of processing can often be important for really good hats and make all the difference - things like overdrive, distortion, exciter etc.

And some modulation - using subtle LFO’s to modulate the timbre of the hats slightly etc.

These little things can make such a difference to the overall sound.

many thanks ill give this a try, i usually cut all the lows out with an eq just as standard

as i wont want any low freq anyway,



does anyone recommend an exciter ? maybe ill try one of the camel ones or would you call them more fx?

Hi guys i m new here, but been a producer for over 16 years, so i was thinking about those Hit hats, well first like some have mentionned earlier really the most important thing to go for it is the choice of your samples now days, u have an extended unlimited variety of possibilities but i would recommend first " goldbaby, modern beat, for sure the vengeance" u have on the market a super selection of high quality samples, and surely u should only go for those, cause those are the material for your productions, so u really need it to be as clean as possible…u know in recording we say that the source has to be perfect before any processing…in electronic music production, this is the same, as we all use samples they better sound as perfect as possible.

Then yes the starting point of the sample, is a good one, as for the eq , what u want is to remove the highs according of your sample and other instruments, a high cut from around 18000hz till 17000 hz would be good then u boost with an high shelf at around 12000 up to 15000 for about 3 to 8 db’s( for this u better use a smooth eq either uad, flux, fab filter,sonnox), to keep the brightness of your hats, keep the air, some really nice passive (obviously the Putlec will do the trick or the massive passive from manley) eq can be add to soften the harshness and crank up this brightness u re looking for…what u could aslo use for a less agressive signal it is an enveloper if u are a logic user, u can remove some ms of the attack, or the bitter sweet of flux, wish is an amazing tool and not to forget the transient designer of spl, and at least but not the last the multiband compressor, will really help this out it will help the highs to cut through your mix without hurting ears of the listeners…as for grouping your signal i also think it helps a lot to group instrument by genre and range of frequencies, i usually do that the percusiv with high frequencies together… with a bitcrusher to give it a subbtle color, so it will reduce the peak in general using it as a hard clipping limiter ( wish i ll insert at the end of chain).

Well i hope those infos can be usefull, but dont forget that after all none of those informations are the truth, u have to try it for yourself and always your ears will tell u if this is what u ll have to follow or not, nothing else can match your ears…so it will come down to a good sound proof in your studio, quality of the speakers and at least u better know them perfectly and your converters…mainly i think that s all

Enjoy, i hope u can do something with all this