Thus far, I’ve come across only two drum libraries which, in my opinion, have hi-hats that can really be worked with: Mixosaurus and Handheld MAD. Both include huge quantities of hi-hat samples, which, until the day that modelling gets it right, is still an absolute necessity. Neither of them is capable of those insane Buddy Rich hi-hat solos (of which https://youtu.be/ZQ8A2EBXRiY?t=272 (this) is a good example), but short of that, they both have hats with which very, very much is possible.
Here’s a short example of the https://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/Drums/Re_MXS-HiHats.mp3 (MXS hi-hats). (Of all sampled hi-hats, these are, to my mind, the very best).
Apart from the actual hi-hat sound (which, sadly, most drum libraries get all wrong, to my ears), the thing I find missing most in all sampled hi-hats (except the two already mentioned) is a convincing transition from closed to open. If, for example, a drummer approaches the chorus of a song, he or she will often begin loosening the (foot-pressure on the pedal of the) hi-hat just a bit, increasingly so as the chorus comes nearer, until the hat is almost completely open, but not quite. It’s that whole range between closed and open (which is a very expressive range of the hi-hat that involves quite a lot of timbral changes and which is something that isn’t just useful for those pre-chorus moments) that’s regrettably absent, or certainly under-represented, in all too many libraries.
And another thing is pitch change depending on how hard you press the pedal. I don’t know of any library that includes samples of this phenomenon (partly because, judging by their sound, most sampled hi-hats have been submitted to a much too drastic hi-pass filtering process). A good illustration of what I mean (and what happens with a real hi-hat) can be heard in the opening bars of Donovan’s https://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/Drums/MelloYellowHiHat.mp3 (“Mellow Yellow”): the tighter the two hi-hat cymbals are pressed together (with the pedal), the higher the pitch of the hat. You might say, “good god, what a ridiculously unimportant detail”, but I don’t think it is. An essential part of what the hi-hat is all about, I find.
And finally: what virtual drums are also incapable of reproducing is the ‘self-oscillation’ of ride cymbals. ‘Self-oscillation’ is, technically speaking, perhaps the wrong word, but if you play a good ride for any length of time with a certain consistency, there emerges somethin extra in the sound — a sort of thin, metallic-ringing nebula — which a single or a few ride hits just don’t produce. Again, it’s one of those subtle things, but it’s a big part of the reason why sampled rides never sound like real ones.
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