Realistic HiHat in Reason 4 with high tempos

[ameridroid]

Hey everyone,

I'm new to the forums but have been snooping around the last few weeks while trying to troubleshoot some isues I've been having with Reason 4. Reason is a great program for building drums and I have some good quality samples, but the hi hats in particular are giving me considerable trouble. The samples sounds great at lower tempos but for the stuff I've been putting down lately (early 80's influenced hardcore punk) the tempos are all around 215 or so, and at that speed the hi hats sound brittle, abrasive and unnatural. The best solution I've come up with so far is to put the same sample in each of the channels in redrum; then i set each channels level and length differently and only use each channel one or two times in a sequence. This is thusfar the best solution I can come up with but they still sound processed and unnatural. Does anyone have any tips or methods to solve this problem?

Thanks,

aaron.

[ElMosca]

Originally Posted by ameridroid

[...]the hi hats in particular are giving me considerable trouble. The samples sounds great at lower tempos but for the stuff I've been putting down lately (early 80's influenced hardcore punk) the tempos are all around 215 or so, and at that speed the hi hats sound brittle, abrasive and unnatural.

I guess I have to ask you: at 215 bpm, are your hi-hats triggered every other note (1/8 notes), every note (1/16 notes) or every four notes (1/4 notes)???

If you're programming 1/16 notes on the hats at 215bpm, then I don't think there's much that you can do to make them sound "human."

Other than that, you can try patching up a Matrix. Plug gate out into gate in of the Redrum's hi-hat channel. Then, you manually draw velocities on the bottom half of the Matrix panel. Draw one pattern after another, then, randomly switch between patterns. See if that makes a difference.

The picture below show your starting point. Not shown are the 16 matrix patterns that you should program, or other nice Combinator tricks you can use to make the Matrix cycle semi-randomly through the patterns....

Have fun and I hope that this helps,
++aldo

[ameridroid]

Originally Posted by ElMosca

I guess I have to ask you: at 215 bpm, are your hi-hats triggered every other note (1/8 notes), every note (1/16 notes) or every four notes (1/4 notes)???

If you're programming 1/16 notes on the hats at 215bpm, then I don't think there's much that you can do to make them sound "human."

Other than that, you can try patching up a Matrix. Plug gate out into gate in of the Redrum's hi-hat channel. Then, you manually draw velocities on the bottom half of the Matrix panel. Draw one pattern after another, then, randomly switch between patterns. See if that makes a difference.

The picture below show your starting point. Not shown are the 16 matrix patterns that you should program, or other nice Combinator tricks you can use to make the Matrix cycle semi-randomly through the patterns....

Have fun and I hope that this helps,
++aldo

Thanks for the advice! They're programmed at 1/8th notes, so it's what I play when I play drums acoustically. I appreciate the help with this, I'll definitely take your advice and hook up a matrix. Thanks again!

-aaron j.

[ElMosca]

Originally Posted by ameridroid

Thanks for the advice! They're programmed at 1/8th notes, so it's what I play when I play drums acoustically. I appreciate the help with this, I'll definitely take your advice and hook up a matrix. Thanks again!

No problem. Make sure you erase the hi-hats from the Redrum pattern, though. Otherwise, you'll get double-triggers, which will probably make your problem worse.

I have attached another screenshot, showing how I make little flams, or ghost notes (in this example, it's the "barely there" vel. on "2-e"). Also notice that most hits are on roughly different velocities.

Also, do make sure you vary your patterns in your sequence. Don't leave a single matrix pattern running for more than two or three measures, otherwise, regular people will start noticing that they're programmed.

Cheers,
++aldo