HH Lab tips

Let’s share some creative HH LAB configurations, tips and uses! After just one brief attempt so far, I’m diving in again. Agenda for today:

  • Make an industrial ambience/texture
  • Make interesting transition effects

Will post the results (if any).

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One tip that i found is to put some of the oscillators quite close in frequencies
Edit: another is do the math with harmonics

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Probably obvious to most, but hitting FUNC+SRC here randomizes just the six oscillators, but not the decay, which is pretty handy to test out different sounds.
Most of my hihats starts like this, then clueless tweaking follows.

Edit: Also thank you for starting this thread. I am on a mission to make great sounding hi-hats and have been scouting for dedicated threads on detailed hat synthesis

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Just watched the beginning of the new Moritz Klein video on synthesizing hi-hats.
Apart from lots of great inspiration in there, he writes out the approximate frequencies resulting the six oscillators in the TR-606 hihat circuit.

The frequencies are 245, 306, 365, 415, 437, 619.

Whether it sounds like a 606 is not for me to judge, but it’s an interesting starting point.

One other thing that I found interesting when trying this out on the HH Lab machine was turning SRC Decay fully open, which just lets it be a continuous noise, and then listen carefully to the subtle change in the sound as you dial the frequency very gently - just one or two Hz at a time.
Afterwards turn the SRC Decay back down to listen to the sound of the hi hat.

Lastly, there is of course the classic Rytm trick of turning the SRC Level all the way down and using the LFO with an EXP WAV envelope set to TRIG MOD and sending that to DST HLAB:Level. I then set SRC Decay fully open, find a LFO speed I like that keeps the OH ring long enough to be satisfying (say SPD:63, MUL:x2), and then use SRC Decay to then find a good length again. This gives a hi hat level envelope that you can dial between long exponential and linear short - sort of. And you can then map velocity to SRC Decay for example as well.

Phew, sorry, that got longish and dense-ish. Hope it makes sense.

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Pretty sick. I’ll have to try this

I’d prob look at a spectrum analyzer to make sure the rytm values correspond with that 606 recipe.

I’d love to approach 606 style hats, though like you suggest, the envelope plays a big roll.

Awesome idea to tie velocity to the decay / curve lfo parameters.

Just watched the same video and planned to post here but you were faster :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: I’m planning to experiment with the HH Lab machine later in the evening.

Thanks for sharing this video! I totally forgot about it and were looking everywhere for the frequencies.
Off to hats now

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I was also searching for the frequencies of the 606’s hihat, and didn’t found anything. Hacked those in! Curiously, using the note E instead of C sounds more like it. I don’t have currently a 606 sample on my Rytm to directly compare.

got carried away…

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I’m also interested in non-realistic or even non-hats that play the same role in the music.
Like sharpening some pure noise.

I love it when some filter gives some wah-like groove, kinda like a funky guitar.
Or with a comb filter. Delay of course, audio range short or to add some groove.

I’ve found hats sounds were also fine to be scratched on with OT fader on SRC/RATE.

On Push, repeat + pad velocity makes it a nice experience to actually play the hats, letting your feeling build it, more than hitting the rhythm first then plocking the velocity. Although the second is fine as well, as you focus on less aspects at the same time.

Only think I really dislike is how overused and lifeless drill ratchets sound to me.

So yeah, excellent discussion, really interested in everything that can be said on your hats-on-FX tricks, you all!

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I guess this has been discussed earlier but does someone know if it is possible to implement different envelopes? Or envelope curves?

Being kind of obsessed with hi-hat synthesis for quite a while I‘d really love to join a more general (non Rytm specific) topic on this! :wink:

Edit: Oh, and thanks for sharing the 606 frequencies @videomusik - I already collected a few others but these were really nowhere to be found so far!

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I think I got the 808 ones somewhere, but you proly got them.

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Sure! :grin:

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Here’s some more frequencies to play around with. (can’t remember all sources, sorry)

TR-808
205.3, 369.6, 304.4, 522.7, 359.4–1149.9, 254.3– 627.2
Oscillators #5–6 have internal trimpots (TM2 and TM1) in series with their resistor, for factory tuning to specific frequencies (800 and 540 Hz, respectively)

DR-110
317, 465, 820, 1150

Acidlab Drumatix
671, 702, 884, 1424

Machinedrum
1.0 - 100, 1.411 - 141.1, 1.8 - 180, 2.7 - 270
Being FM synthesis there are multiples of a given base frequency which calculate the actual frequencies. Example above is just to illustrate.

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Haven’t updated my rytm yet, can we have two instances of HHlab to get all those nice frequency s ?

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What should I say … I don’t even have a Rytm. But A4 get’s me everywhere. :nerd_face:

I did it on the monomachine sort of.
I’m slowly wondering if I should trade my rytm for a4 for better drum synthesis.

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Well, there’s two tracks to do it on: CH and OH. Of course they cut each other off (with Ch having priority if they both trigger at the same time), so you can’t get two fully independent sound sources. But it beats having to p-lock say the OH sound.

Thank you heaps for this. This is an amazing starting point for exploration.

Any other tips out there with regards to 6 oscillator hihat sounds?

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Oh snap !