My hats

[Stace]

Elo Subsekt,

I can't even begin to describe the issues I've been having with my hats, for years now. I can never get them sounding quite right. I just was playing on my Digitakt and then recorded in the hats I'd made with Overbridge (spaff) and now they are in a DAW, they just sound SHIT. What the holy fuck am I doing wrong? I thought I was getting to grips with them but it's the single biggest sticking point and it really ruins my vibe when I just want to make music and I've got these stupid hats running my life.

I've recently been making an artistic choice to just leave them out

How do you generally treat your hats?

[dubdub]

Well, it would help to have some examples of your hats and the kind of hats you'd like to achieve.

Personally, I use the 707 closed quite a bit as some kind of basis, then I pitch or layer it. Ableton's Vocoder in noise mode is really good for layering with hats.

Also, I've found that more often than not, hats that don't quite sit or groove right can fixed with compression; both on the channel and the drum bus.

[Root]

+1 for examples

All in all I really don't do much to hihats. They mostly come out of my drummies or I choose some samples, gentle lowcut and programm rhythm to taste. Sometimes gentle compression or abletons sampler for transientshaping to achieve a well balanced mix. No special trick. Most of the time finding the right sample does everything.

[Ben Kohonays]

I just was playing on my Digitakt and then recorded in the hats I'd made with Overbridge (spaff) and now they are in a DAW, they just sound SHIT.

This sounds like you were happy with them before transferring them to the DAW, is that correct?

[Stace]

I think I've fixed it, well with the help of Twitter - my constant place to expel my instant rage at things.

I fucked about with the attack and they sound LOADS better. They were too sharp sounding and I couldn't soften them. Nothing else could make them sit proplely within the mix.

Yes, Ben, I felt like they were ok in my machine but the moment I took them out, it felt all wrong. By that time I'd only added one additional part that wasn't in the original jam. So weird, I think this is partly mental too

[Mslwte]

So many times I've recorded a jam on hardware, then listened back i it doesn't sound right.

Do we get caught up in the moment and not think rationally about what we are doing?

[timc3]

Yeah getting the right sound is key. I think what happened by changing the attack is you warped the sound to what was needed in the context of the track.

Messing around with the envelope is a good starting point.

[Lost to the Void]

I think I've fixed it, well with the help of Twitter - my constant place to expel my instant rage at things.

I fucked about with the attack and they sound LOADS better. They were too sharp sounding and I couldn't soften them. Nothing else could make them sit proplely within the mix.

Yes, Ben, I felt like they were ok in my machine but the moment I took them out, it felt all wrong. By that time I'd only added one additional part that wasn't in the original jam. So weird, I think this is partly mental too

Sometimes clipping can also be an alternative to shaping the envelope as you still get the crisp attack, but vastly reduced transients.
And there are many ways to clip.

Hat`s from drum machines are inevitably overly transient.

[over9000]

it can also be the timing, so with shaping the attack you might have corrected that
i mean that the groove in your machine sits just right, but recording into ableton fucks with the time signature and the groove falls apart
i experienced this with another elektron device, i dont know overbridge, but the midi over usb gives me horrible bpm jitter, impossible to get the groove recorded right.
I dident find a solution so far

[Ben Kohonays]

it can also be the timing, so with shaping the attack you might have corrected that
i mean that the groove in your machine sits just right, but recording into ableton fucks with the time signature and the groove falls apart
i experienced this with another elektron device, i dont know overbridge, but the midi over usb gives me horrible bpm jitter, impossible to get the groove recorded right.
I dident find a solution so far

Could you not just sequence on the Elektron, record the audio and match it up in the DAW?

[Alume]

Can you explain why they don’t sit right?

Is it a timing thing or a tonal thing? And yeah, examples!