Hi-Hat Drum Samples - 2 Mistakes
The hi-hat drum samples of today are as varied as they are underappreciated. Think about your favorite songs for a moment. You can probably hear the kick and snare working away in memory, but it can be very hard to keep track of the hi-hat. The truth is, most hi-hats (hats for short) are just supporting acts to the snare and kick combinations that dominate our attention, but they are nevertheless an essential part of most music production projects, so underestimate them at your peril!
The two mistakes made by producers are not just the domain of amateur producers who may not know better, but also of professional music producers and beat makers.
The first mistake we will look at concerns the volume of hi-hats. There is definitely a battle of the loud out there, and we try to compress and tighten everything up, but the fact of the matter is we don’t need to do this for hi-hats. Hats are plenty loud as it is. Many hundreds of thousands of years ago, humans were pray to aerial monsters that let out sounds that share similar frequencies with hi-hats. We have developed a tendency to pick these sounds out quickly, so drop those hi-hat drum samples down a few decibels - your audience will hear them.
You will never really ‘mix out’ hi-hat samples, just lower them a few decibels during the beat making process. So first mix them to where you think they should be and then drop them a few notches further down. This incongruity has let down a lot of budding mixers who must understand that what they hear is not what their audience will hear at all times.
The second mistake is about achieving authenticity with your hip hop drum samples… If you’re trying to establish your song as having a real drum part, do not make the mistakes that many others do. Let me give you an example: a constant closed hi-hat in the left channel plays once every 16th note, 16 times a bar, and on the third beat; we hear an open hi-hat that strikes at the same time. What is wrong with this? Well, just about every real drum set only comes with one set of cymbals to manipulate, and triggering a closed hi-hat so often and consistently demonstrates that the cymbals are firmly closed, and yet you also hit the open cymbal at the same time. This is physically impossible, so don’t do this if you’re trying to set a tone of authenticity in your drum beats. Dance tunes, on the other hand, often have two or three different types of hats playing simultaneously, and if it’s the electronic vibe you want to lay down, go crazy. If it sounds good, it’s all good!
You can also go with the default drum samples patterns in programs like Toontrack EZ Drummer and BFD, as well as others. These programs usually include patterns that were really tapped out by a professional drummer on an electronic drum set and do not include these mistakes. You can learn a great deal using programs like this.
Want to make your own beats? Check out our how to rap freestyle guides.
