Use your hats to add groove

In most Trap or Drill beats, the Hi-Hat plays one of the most important roles among the drums as a beat generator. If you need to move quickly during a session, you willl often use ready-made hi-hat loops. However, it can happen that the loop just does not fit to the other drums. So simply create your own hi-hat loops!

1

Standard Rhythm

First, we mark an interval of 4 bars in the arrangement. This is how long our self-made hi-hat loop should be. Then, we go to our Closed Hi-Hat in the Channel Rack and select Fill each 2 steps. The resulting rhythm is the basic structure of the hi-hat loop, on which we can build with more complex variations. 1

2

Rolls

Now we edit the pattern of the hi-hat in the Piano Roll for a better overview. In this step, we add more notes between the individual notes to create so-called Hi-Hat Rolls. It makes sense to use these rolls before a new bar so that the listener is guided to the next beat of the snare or kick, for example. 1

3

Pitch variation

To add further variation to the pattern, we now also change the pitch of some of the notes in the rolls. As the hi-hat is usually not tonal, all notes can also be used outside the key without any problems. It is also best to let the pitch descend linearly, which creates a kind of Tape Stop Effect. 1

4

Emphasis

So far, our hi-hat loop still sounds fairly artificial. This is because every single beat of the hi-hat is played at the same volume. To make the loop sound a little more human or realistic, we emphasize some notes by making some notes louder and other notes softer in the lower part of the piano roll under Control Velocity. 1

5

Panning

To give the hi-hat loop more stereo width, we move some notes a little to the left or right in the stereo panorama. To do this, we go to Note Pan in the lower part of the piano roll under Control. It‘s useful to alternate the notes rhythmically, although even very subtle panning is enough to make the loop sound more interesting. 1

6

Mixing

Now there are no more limits to your creativity. In addition to technical mixing, such as cutting off the low frequencies with an Equalizer or distorting the sound with a Distortion plugin, there are also possibilities to make the hi-hat loop even more exciting with, for example, automations of a Flanger, Chorus or Phaser.