quote:

Originally posted by lightflash hey, new to the board and production so been doing some searching through older threads. Stumbled across this one and was intrigued about "The Mekkem Rhythm Guide has about 100 hi hat patterns". I've tried the website but it doesn't work anymore - I'm assuming this knowledge just can't have been lost which would be a shame. So has anyone any pointers regarding either patterns or this Mekkem Rhythm Guide? From a beginner this would be helpful as a starting point, cheers.

Yeah the website doesn't work any more. But take it from me - I bought the rhythm guide, looked and went 'wow, so here's a pattern, there's a pattern'. They all sound good. And when you're looking at 100 different patterns for 4 bars of hi-hats, you cover a lot of them. So much that after about 2 days you can just put it down and realise that pretty much ANYTHING you write as a hats line is going to work, and you don't need to copy them out from a list.
Just push notes around, make up your own lines, layer up to 10 of them and listen for the groove. That's about it.
I know you won't like that answer, as I hated those kind of answers when I was just starting. But just do it, and trust that it'll give you good results. It will.

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Monsoon - Astrosurf

they only kind of hihat paterns im having trouble to make is in airbase - pandemonium... now how that for hats?

Just wondering what sort of note values you'd suggest to use? I've seen 16ths a few times and was wondering if this is as small as i should go? maybe 32?

I find the main problem i have is it all sounds a bit abrupt, no real flow to the groove..

Cheers.

^ Try to apply delay with 3/4 delay times on your hihats. Ohmforce Ohmboyz does a good job with that, but almost every delay unit should work wonders. It can produce some nice effects if you got a stereo delay, your hats will automatically sound "richer".

32s are not really needed (only in some fills maybe)...

this is how I constructed the hihats on my latest tune... note I am a Psy producer, but the percussion is kinda similar to "normal" trance I think:

- strong closed hihat on the offbeat. Make it strong, but dont let it stand out too much... its a matter of fine tuning.
- driving hihat every 1/16. To spice it up, try to alter the pitch on some of the notes a little. Something like C-C#-C#-C-C-C#-E-C for example should work.
- add another layer of soft, long hats with a kinda simple groove to "fill the gaps"... Again try to play with the pitch.
- now feel free to add more hats with a little pitch variation. The more emphasis you put on the percussion, the more hihatlines I'd add. Now our new hihatline can be a little deeper, again with some slight variations on the pitch.
- feel free to add more percussive sounds. Note that you always should keep times of 3/16 (or 3/4) in mind.. this should be a groove which in addition to the beat-offbeat character should enhance the drive and groove of your tune big time. Kinda hard to explain, you just have to get a feeling of the hihat groove, and things will almost happen themselves.

Try this one for example, "K" is for kick, "H" is for Hihat (the offbeat one), and "G" is for groove hihat (the one I'm talking about):
K-_-_-_|K-_-_-_|K-_-_-_|K-_-_-_|
_-_-H-_|_-_-H-_|_-_-H-_|_-_-H-_|
-_-_G-_|_-G-_-_|G-_-_-G|_-_-G-_|

Now you can even add shakers/ deeper hihats, like this...
|_-_-S-S|_-_-S-S|_-_-S-S|_-_-S-S|

In terms of percussion arrangement, all of my tunes look different, and its almost impossible to make a science out of it. Hope I could help..

A very interesting plugin IMO every producer should be aware of is the bitcrusher "E-Phonic LoFi". Carefully applied, your bitcrusher can make your percussion sound "richer", and also kinda "raw"... I often had problems with percussion where the "clean" hihat sounds didnt sound like a real unity. After some Bitcrusher treatment, they sounded just like a good drumloop... and if you want a really hard industrial percussion, this is the way to create complete aural destruction

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Cybernetika albums (free DL): Atropos (2009) | Nanospheric (2008) | Neural Network Expansion (2007) | Promo #1 (2006) | Paralysis (2005)

homepage: http://www.cybernetika.de

Last edited by cybernetica on Nov-21-2005 at 21:25