When it comes to making good drum patterns I am usually pretty creative with the sounds and structure with everything except the hi-hats. I can never come up with something that fits the feeling of straight 16th notes without sounding like 80'sish or like cheezy trance.

Pretty much the standard is a pattern like this:

1---1---1---1--- bass drum
1111111111111111 closed hihat
--1---1---1---1- open hi hat

When I listen to songs by James Holden for instance, it doesn't sound like this. What is he doing? Anyone have any suggestions or any idea what producers do to make this sound less cheezy.

I guess what I am saying, is that the pattern above is a standard and is almost requird for a trance song and used in pretty much every trance song, but producers add things to it and change it a little to make it sound and feel different, what do they do?

1) shift the closed hihats here and there to give it a bit of a "groove"
2) hihats sound nice when you give them a bit of stereo treatment
3) change their velocities - some hihats louder than others
4) use multiple hihats (not too many, though)
5) just experiment

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if you are using fruityloops try the Humanize function (alt+h). this will randomize velocity, panning or pitch. or you may try some presets.
hit 'f8' to bring up the explorer. there you will see 'Humanize presets'. start the track, select your hihat channel, right click on one of those presets and listen to it.

try this:

1---1---1---1--- bass drum
22--22--22--22-- hihat closed
--3---3---3---3- hihat opened

or ehm.. go for an little strange one, but sometimes cool:

1---1---1---1--- bass drum
222-2-2-222-2-22 hihat closed
---3--3----3--3- hihat opened

ehm.. can i think of more.. try this one:

1---1---1---1--- bass drum
-2-2--22-2-2--22 hihat closed
--3---3---3---3- hihat opened

well.. just experiment with it.. just try some combinations, and if it sounds nice, keep it

grtz,

DJ Mantis

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www.luukmaes.tk

Add a nice delay to your open high hats.

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Saturday October 6, 2001 - Tiesto @ The Kool Haus in Toronto, Canada (Simply Incredible)

Armin @ State in Toronto, Canada (Can it get any better?)

Friday April 26, 2002 - Jon 00 Flemming @ System in Toronto, Canada (It was over too fast =[)

quote:

Originally posted by Synergy Add a nice delay to your open high hats.

agreed. adding a delay to certain hi hats, makes the pattern much thicker.

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