THE PERFECT HI-HATS AND CYMBALS

So you’ve got your kick and snare – now let’s add some sizzling metalwork to complete the kit

The hi-hats are a pair of cymbals mounted on a stand, one upside down and the other the right way up, both held in place on a central spike and connected to a foot pedal at the base of the stand. By operating the pedal, the drummer brings the hi-hats together. If you watch a jazz drummer play, you’ll see that the hi-hats spend most of the time closed, but open and shut quickly on the second and fourth beats of the bar. In just about all other modern styles the hi-hats are kept closed or half-closed and played with sticks, anchoring the drum track by beating out eighth-notes.

The role of the hats is to give life to the kick and snare pattern. Acoustic hats vary from small, thin, and bright (jazz, pop, dance) to big, thick, and dark (rock), and only really have four sounds: closed, half-closed, open and pedaled. Of course, each of these has endless tonal variations, as a browse through any good drum sample library will illustrate.

A good drummer or programmer will use accents (where certain hits are louder than the others) to bring what might otherwise be a boring hi-hat pattern to life, but as well as the volume, a skilled player, or programmer will play around with the timing.

Moving or playing the hi-hat part slightly ahead of or behind the beat will subtly change the feel of the groove, making it feel more urgent or laid back. In dance music, the kick is almost always quantised exactly to the grid, but moving other elements around can create a much groovier feel. A bit of swing will slightly delay every other beat in a pattern of 16ths, creating a ‘shuffle’ feel. The quantise functions in your DAW will have loads of variations of swing for you to experiment with.