Sampling Hi Hats

[LMNO]

I noticed that sometimes I sample breaks, the hi hats aren't loud enough even at max volume recording. I normalize it, but then it sounds bad. What should I do to make the hi hat chop louder and not sound too bad.

 

[Lex]

You could try finding sections where it's just the hihat, but that's quite rare...although often I have found sections of jaz records where it's just the bass and the hihat, and due to the two instruments [for the most part] occupying the opposite ends of the frequency spectrum, it is relatively easy to filter out one of the instruments.

I know I haven't really answered the question, but it wasn't all that clear - are you normalising the break before you chop out the hihat sounds, or are you chopping out individual hits then normalising them?

EQing the hihat afterwards might make it sound better, but not necessarily how you want it to sound.

 

[wavez]

whatup?
yea its usually a problem. my suggestions would be to cut out low end, and tighten it up a bit, cut the decay. then maybe layer it with some clean hihat.

and a just came to idea. when ur recording ur break, then record it like so that ur kicks and snares are all the way up in red (over the peak limit), but ur hihat it just a bit below the red, ofcourse ur kick and snare would be unusable then, but u might could get a better hihat out from there...it might work