Hi hats for house
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darthbrooklyn
- Posts: 10
- Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2006 9:10 am
Hi hats for house
Can anyone offer any good advice on creating good high hat patterns... how do you guys get more expressive/swing out of your patterns besides the typical house pattern of K-HH-K-HH... I cant seem to figure out how to get past this.. I try to throw in some shakers but it all sounds so cheap and cliche... any help here would be greatly appreciated...
Re: Hi hats for house
Create your pattern, then start to move some of the hits slightly off the beat.
I would generally leave any that are on a downbeat where they are, but shift any that fall in between either forwards or backwards a tiny amount. I tend to move one back a bit, then the next forward a bit.
This should give you a bit of swing/shuffle/groove, which is what house hats are all about.
just experiment with it a bit.
I would generally leave any that are on a downbeat where they are, but shift any that fall in between either forwards or backwards a tiny amount. I tend to move one back a bit, then the next forward a bit.
This should give you a bit of swing/shuffle/groove, which is what house hats are all about.
just experiment with it a bit.
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tw1nstates
- Posts: 1127
- Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2007 1:00 pm
Re: Hi hats for house
delays, verbs, phasers as well i guess.
Often what people are taking about is not just the hats but the shakers and percussion all adding to the vibe.
Hows your notation? You obviously have some sense of rhythm as you were about to give a K-HH-K-HH breakdown of the rhythm.
Velocity is a bit of a key thing, more so I find than moving stuff around. A hue amount of house stuff is hard quantisd then shuffled so you can use the Ableton shuffle for that, set to 30%, play around with eh velocities of your hats *but* keep making similar patters, i.e. Loud, quieter, same, louder or whatever, you could try varying this for the last bar of a 8 bar section (reverse that velocity pattern while keeping the hits in the same place). Or you can try having a straight groove then something that works on 6/8 under, or place a patter so that the first and second hits are 2 half notes apart and the 2nd and third are say 3, then the 3rd and 4th and 2 half notes apart then the 4th and 5th are 3 and keep repeating till then end of a section where you break up the pattern and start again. You might need to change the rest periods as I am not in front of live now, that kind of stuff gives a nice feel when you get the rest periods right. You can also apply the same approach to velocities. Try and see it all as interlinking patterns that will resolve at certain places. All music is basically maths and feel at the end of the day so some sort of ordered approach tempered with 'feel' or your innate discernment as a listener can work wonders over jut randomly placing stuff without any real idea. .
Btw I asked abou your notation cos if it;s good then just go through and notate 10 or 20 loops, put this into Live as midi then load up a bunch of different samples and swap em in and out till you get what you like.
The biggest revalation for me was use of velocity and having good multi samples.
Listen to a lot of disco as well. That's the basis for a lo of house, the more you get that the more you will hear house loops as disco with extra adornment, makes it easier to break it down then. .
Often what people are taking about is not just the hats but the shakers and percussion all adding to the vibe.
Hows your notation? You obviously have some sense of rhythm as you were about to give a K-HH-K-HH breakdown of the rhythm.
Velocity is a bit of a key thing, more so I find than moving stuff around. A hue amount of house stuff is hard quantisd then shuffled so you can use the Ableton shuffle for that, set to 30%, play around with eh velocities of your hats *but* keep making similar patters, i.e. Loud, quieter, same, louder or whatever, you could try varying this for the last bar of a 8 bar section (reverse that velocity pattern while keeping the hits in the same place). Or you can try having a straight groove then something that works on 6/8 under, or place a patter so that the first and second hits are 2 half notes apart and the 2nd and third are say 3, then the 3rd and 4th and 2 half notes apart then the 4th and 5th are 3 and keep repeating till then end of a section where you break up the pattern and start again. You might need to change the rest periods as I am not in front of live now, that kind of stuff gives a nice feel when you get the rest periods right. You can also apply the same approach to velocities. Try and see it all as interlinking patterns that will resolve at certain places. All music is basically maths and feel at the end of the day so some sort of ordered approach tempered with 'feel' or your innate discernment as a listener can work wonders over jut randomly placing stuff without any real idea. .
Btw I asked abou your notation cos if it;s good then just go through and notate 10 or 20 loops, put this into Live as midi then load up a bunch of different samples and swap em in and out till you get what you like.
The biggest revalation for me was use of velocity and having good multi samples.
Listen to a lot of disco as well. That's the basis for a lo of house, the more you get that the more you will hear house loops as disco with extra adornment, makes it easier to break it down then. .
Last edited by tw1nstates on Tue Mar 31, 2009 1:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Grappadura
- Posts: 2122
- Joined: Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:57 pm
Re: Hi hats for house
a step sequencer is good for quick experimentation. Sometimes a single pattern doesn´t sound really good, but in combination with other patterns it fits in.
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Re: Hi hats for house
+1 for shifting hits back and forth.
also dynamics man, dynamics. they are so, so important.
gives a groove, a ryhtmic swing into the hihat pattern.
use velocity to pull single steps down or push them up in volume.
think of a drummer and how he would play the pattern - def. not static
in timing and dynamic.
also dynamics man, dynamics. they are so, so important.
gives a groove, a ryhtmic swing into the hihat pattern.
use velocity to pull single steps down or push them up in volume.
think of a drummer and how he would play the pattern - def. not static
in timing and dynamic.