In my never-ending quest to find a way to a meaner and dirtier sound (especially with my new projects) I decided to trying distorting the hi-hats. And, as I expected, it sounded a bit meaner.
But I’m kind of on the fence about it. Is this just a cop-out way of getting a meaner sound? Have any of you ever done this?
(On an unrelated note, I thought of this while I was driving and not thinking about anything production related. I think of a ton of ideas about producing on a accident while I’m driving. How weird is that?)
Not weird at all. You should put a little digital recorder in your car or if you an an iphone use the recording app. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had save the world kind of ideas in my car, but forgot them later.
I do process the hats a lot to try and make them sound a certain way. I never had distorted them cause I dont like to have the high freq of my tracks getting mushy. I do use a Highpass filter set very tight and with a positive Q so the shh sounds gets tighter… I love that. Also have combined white noise with hats and snare to make them sound meaner… as they were slapping you
I do also make breaks having each hat on a 8 or 4 bar loop having a bigger detune from the original. I use the transpose function in Ableton and apply a bigger on to each hat…
Just some ideas… you can do lots to the high frequencies affecting your track, and it shows BUt be very carefull that clipping the high freqs sounds awefull and ultimately your track can sound as a bad quality mp3 when all the high ends are mushy.
Have not done anything to try and make my tracks meaner, in fact mine are not mean but If I would be producing dubstep or hard techno , I would look onto how to make the bass and synths sound stronger. In my personal opinion tracks sound better when high frequencies as hats or bells sound crystal clear.
If you’re using distortion, pushing the signal into clipping, try adding some gating to retain the envelope shape. That way you can really shape the sound.
I don’t think using distortion is a cop-out, it’s just the flat out solution in most cases to get a mean or dirty sound. What better way to make something sound f****d up than distorting it beyond belief?
Distortion in high frequency = rapid hearing loss… not good.. find another way dude! I like overdrive or saturated tape fx in the lower frequencies… but always keep the highs pristine..
