that hihat on the new Atheist...

Apr 14, 2010
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Germany
man have you all heard the new atheist?
i really like it but what stands out to me is the hihat.
somehow i love the 'ccchk' sounds or whatever you want to call them.
i'm trying to find out ways to process a hihat to produce that kind of sound. sounds like an awful lot of high frequencies but i haven't even come close yet.

any ideas from you guys?

thanks!
 
maybe i can widen the question a bit:

take andy sneap's productions for example or most modern metal productions, the new atheist just being a standout example:

they all have a very smooth hihat/cymbal sound to them.

i'd like to know in which ways to process them to get in the ballpark.
simply highpassing and high shelving hasn't yielded the desired results yet.

any tips are appreciated.
 
I couldn't tell you anything specific about the album but if you do a little digging on this forum and google, you could find a lot:

If you haven't already, find out what high hat is used on the Athiest album and use it or something similar. Then find out how he goes about miking his his high hats and try to do the same. Experiment with moving the mic around and point it at the hat in different angles and towards or away from the rest of the kit/what mic(s) he's using. Overheads have a huge influence on the whole kit. Any info on how he uses dynamics and processes his drums would help you. The type of comp/eq/desk he's running it through will shape the sound. If Andy has some fav. dynamic processors, they are probably being used. You could get some plugins that model it or find something similar.

However, I can't stress enough that they main sound is coming from the source/mic and not the mixing.

Lastly, try to find a sample where its just one high hat hit with no other instruments and do a Freq. analysis on it and compare it to your own. This will tell you alot about how your hat sonically sounds compares to his. Do some eq'ing. Maybe boost some low mids/cut some highs if your hat sounds too thin. Take into consideration though that this will be the sound of his hat after mastering, which usually involves some compression, high shelf boosts, etc.

I'd get as close as I could with the actual source, then tweak it by mixing. I hope this helps your search.