Hi Hat Drum Playing Techniques

Video Transcript

Hi! My name is Frank and in this clip of the drum set we’re going to focus on the hi-hat, but specifically how the foot works the hi-hat. In the other clips, in some other clips we looked at the bass drum pedals. And there are some similar techniques that are used in the hi-hat, but because the instrument is so unique, there are some unique techniques that we want to learn. So the similarities start with you can do heel up or heel down, but the difference comes when we look at the instrument itself: it’s not about just going up and down with the cymbal. We want to get other sounds out of the cymbal too, so let’s take a look at what the foot does. You can play with the heel up, and like we talked about heel down, so just the front of the foot is moving. Most of the hi-hat work is going to be done keeping time. What I like, because the drummer’s number one job is keeping a steady beat, a steady tempo is playing heel up most of the time, and no matter what I play, my foot my heel is bouncing keeping the time…1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 so you can see I always got that tempo in my foot. There are two other techniques that I’ll show you with my foot… it’s going up with the toe and then down with the heel, back and forth; it’s a rocking technique and a lot of jazzers use this to get solid time. Take a look…the hi-hat goes up and down, and that in itself creates a tempo. And the last technique is a little bit of a different technique, a specialty, one but it happens depending on the style of music you want to play, or where you want to put it in any music you play, is called a splash. Unlike a splash cymbal that you would hit with your sticks, the splash comes when you splash the two cymbals together and get the sound; to get that with your foot you have to do similar things…what I like to do is with the heel of my foot slap the pedal and get off of it. In another clip we’ll look at how to incorporate what you’re doing with your left foot with what your sticks can do on top and come up with some great combinations.

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