How to Play a Half Open High Hat

Video Transcript

JOEL SIEGEL: Another aspect of the hi-hat and this is a very important one--you're going to find it a lot, especially in rock, pop music. This is your kinda half-open; you can call it the sizzle sound. There are a lot of different ways to name it and think about it, but there's this sound. Now, you can hear what's happening as I'm striking this top hi-hat--in this case the side--and the resonance of the cymbal is making it interact with the cymbal on the bottom. And this is where the color--the real colors of the cymbals will shine through where they combine to give you this continuous wash. So if you're trying to build intensity in the music that's loud, you're kind of jacking up the dynamics, this is where this kind of stroke is going to come into play. Part of it is what your foot is doing. So what I'm going to show you is, as I'm playing, you can see the stick and then you'll go down and see where the foot is versus where it is when it's closed. You can see that there's not a huge difference, visually, in where my foot is positioned when the hi-hat is closed and when you get that half-open sound. It's a lot--it's going to be a lot of kind of a pressure aspect. As you develop familiarity with your hi-hat and as you get comfortable with it, you'll be able to start to feel where that kind of little sweet spot is, where you get that nice extended sound out of the cymbals.

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