Warming up the highs

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cohma101

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Apr 20, 2012
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MA
Anyone have some tips on warming up my highs. . . .I EQ every track to get everything fitting in the mix (to the best of my ability). I always do filter sweeps through my hats to find resonance, and cut those frequencies, but i still always have really cold hats. If I drop the high shelf, I end up losing energy. . . . . .Help? haha Thanks.
 
What DAW are you using? Regardless, I'd say set up some sort of bus that is EQ'd so only the high end gets affected and run your cymbals all to it; then just throw on a nice saturator, some overdrive, teeny tiny bit of chorus, and maybe anther bout of compression to beef it all out. Just a start, do ya own thang, baby! ;)
 
tweek your mix if the balance between the highs and everything else isnt right. no real need to take out resonant freqz from hihats unless there is a specific reason for it - but not for mixdown issues as a general rule.

if you cant get your hi-hats loud enough in the mix to be nice and clear, then you need to look at your other sounds, and see what is taking up the space the hi-hats needs, then tweek them and re-tweek the mix over all

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what do you mean by 'cold hats'? perhaps you are taking out to much from the low end, although hi-passing hats is a good idea, its not if you are taking out freqz that you need! try hi-passing lower down, then check your other sounds to make sure they are giving your hats enough space
 
I put Izotope Ozone on my master channel than use the Harmonic Exciter to boost the highs a little

seems to work better than just simply boosting the hats with an eq on their own channel
 
Thanks all. Miszt, By cold hats I mean really resonant and abrasive. Even after putting some work in, making surgical cuts.
 
cohma101 said:
Thanks all. Miszt, By cold hats I mean really resonant and abrasive. Even after putting some work in, making surgical cuts.
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my first suggestion is change the hats, if you really love the hats, then try sculpting their sound using gentle/shallow and wide EQ cuts/boosts, rather than surgical points, i only do surgical eq for specific problems, rather than generally trying to alter the sound of a hat

also check your other sounds, esp between 1.5khz and 3.5khz, and if your hats go as low as 500hz, then check between 400-1khz aswell, do sum surgical EQ there if you find any resonant points, they will add to the abrasion of your hats.

Resonant points are more difficult to deal with, try the shallow EQ I suggested, but sounds to me like you need diffrent hats - some surigical EQ on the resonant points can help (esp on your other sounds), but bare in mind that the issue with resonance may not be the resonant point itself, but a conflict with another sound, or even a harmonic octave below or above the resonant point - surgical EQ is great, but u have to know what you are looking for, shallow and wide is where I'd start as I said (3 times, sorry, its important :) )



adding any effects like saturation, phase/stereo widening, chorus, are all going to distort the resonant points further, might make them fussier, might make them even more painful, i'd deal with the problem of EQ and mixdown before adding any effects
 
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dont try to polish a turd......i often dont even use much eq on my hats....the key is picking the right type of hats but getting the volumn right.
 
i came across a technique last night where you chuck you hat into sampler and increase the time of the attack... it kinda of makes a shaker sort of noise that added a huge difference to the overall atmosphere of my tune when i bussed a small amount of reverb - not sure if this "warming" but i was amazed
 
/\ Cool tip, def. gonna try that a little later today.


And something I do, I've definitely posted about it before; but I have this sampler instrument of a jazz drum kit played with wire brushes. I'll set up a sustained snare roll that runs for the duration of my drum groove; that timbre of the roll gives the same effect as layering white noise on top of the break, but without any of the harshness that comes to the top-end with white noise. SO, what happens is, you get a nice warm, almost tape-like vibe to your groove that doesn't sound like a distinct sound sitting on the beat. It just gels everything together and sound really fantastic, imo.


I'll put up a .wav of the snare roll in this thread a lil' later today.
 
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All what's been said above but i recon this is mainly down to sample choice in you case. Envelopers are really useful for hats as well.
 
Russla-DJ said:
All what's been said above but i recon this is mainly down to sample choice in you case. Envelopers are really useful for hats as well.
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yeah good point! shaping your sound with envelopes, I prefer to do it manually (usually in a sampler by setting Attack/Decay etc) but envelope shapers are awsome tools aswell, or by using compressors to alter the transients can also be very effective, sometimes just taking a few milliseconds of the tail of a hat can alter its sound drastically, if ur hat has for eg a 30ms tail, try getting a decay of 20 or 10ms instead, might find your mix opens up nicely.

also - beware of reverb on hats, for basically the same reasons as you would use envelope/transient shaping
 
Tape and vinyl impact high end in a usually pleasing way, so emulating that with plugins can help out. Sonic maximizers also add a bit of clarity. Adding chorus to hihats have seemed to give me warmth aswell
 
So, a little delayed, here's the snare roll I was talking about, and I added an example of a beat I threw together really quickly, it's 4 bars, the first two has the snare roll in it, and I turned the channel off for the second two. The difference is actually pretty significant, listen to the way the second two bars sound WAY emptier and spacier than the first 2, if it were a real track I'd put a little more effort into mixing it in, but this gets the point across well enough.

I'd recommend fading in or chopping the sample to get rid of the drum attack, and adding Ableton's native vinyl distortion to the sample may or may not make you a very happy dude ;)

http://www.mediafire.com/?v4bpuuu1c2cprs6
 
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