Ultimate Hi‑Hats
Cap off your beats with almost a thousand recorded and synthesised hi-hat hits and loops – you’ll never need to trawl for hats again!
It’s perhaps the most innovative, clever, yet somehow simple idea in drumming history, and it’s come to shape modern music in almost every genre. The hi-hat mounts two cymbals on a stand with a pedal. Used tightly pressed together or loosened apart, the effect is a versatile top-end that adds spark, pace and personality to any groove.
To celebrate the humble hats in all their forms, we’ve commissioned this pack of 985 WAVs for you to download and pepper over your productions. Within it are a variety of hits and loops consisting of a vast collection of hi-hat sounds… but enough of our yappin’, how about reading what its creators have to say about it?
Cyclick
“This collection comprises, much like the hi-hat itself, two elements: loops and hits. There are 315 loops in the Cyclick part of this pack, with seven different ‘banks’ producing five loops each in nine different tempos (95, 110, 120, 125, 128, 135, 140, 170 and 175bpm). These banks are split into two types: acoustic and electronic.
“Patterns were created for each bank in each tempo (I switched between grid drawing and bashing a keyboard), and then often given a bit of randomised quantise to give them a little swing. Many of the hat loops have an overt swing varying from 10% to 80%
“Once each tempo was complete, the drum bank channels were treated to various processes (EQ, modulation, short delays, tape saturation, filtering, etc) and then rendered and edited. Often the root sample pitches were tweaked too. This was done with each tempo, so the sound does change from tempo to tempo for the same bank. The hits were picked out from a few of the tempo tweaks, so not every single version of the hi-hat hits is used (that would be over 500 samples at a guess), but every root hi-hat is included with one treatment.
“Obviously these loops and hits are just the start. They can take plenty of further processing – stretch ’em, distort ’em, pitch ’em and generally never let them be. Happy hatting!”
Tip your hats to Robbie: @CyclickBob
Groove Criminals
“For the Groove Criminals portion of this pack, you get both recorded hits and drum-machine versions. We decided to show some love to the underrated stylings of units like the Yamaha RY8, Boss 220, Vermona DRM1 and Korg Rhythm 55, since you probably have enough x0x-box hats to fill a milliner’s workshop already!
“To finish off the hits, we also threw some through a couple of vintage delay units – the old trusty Watkins Copicat and an Evans Echopet analogue delay. All the loops are a mixture of live played and programmed using real hats, samples, drum machines and sometimes a mixture of all three! The processed loops were made by messing the hats up with a variety of effects ranging from guitar stompboxes, to modular and plugin effects chains.”
Praise Oli’s metal: @Groove Criminals