Music Lesson: Exploring Hi Hat Sounds

Hey guys, me again! We're going to start going through different sounds now. One of my favorite sounds is the hi hat.

Types of Hi Hats

There are two types of hi hats:

• Closed Hi Hat: Sounds like this: T.
• Open Hi Hat: Sounds like this: T.

Importance of Hi Hats

When someone's playing drums, the types of hi hats they use create different dynamics. They can:

• Make a beat
• Give it its groove

So, it's a really important sound to get down.

How to Produce Hi Hat Sounds

It's very simple because all you're doing is pronouncing the consonant T.

1. Start by saying:
   • T, T, T
2. Remove the vowel:
   • Just the consonant sounds like: T, T, T, T, T, T

You can either use your breath from your lungs to say T, T, T, or just use your mouth. By using the little air that's already in your mouth, it sounds tighter and cleaner like: T, T, T, T.

Transitioning to Open Hi Hats

Once you've got the hang of that, you can move on to the open hi hat, where you simply add an S to the end of the T:

• It goes like this: T, T, T, T.

So all you're doing is saying:

• T S, S, T.

The longer you hold that S, the more open of a sound you get. If you want to keep it really tight (for example, throwing it into a beat), it can also sound really cool.

Practice Patterns

You can start to practice with beats. Here's how:

1. Practice Slowly: Come up with your own different patterns.
2. Just repeat: T, T, T, T.

Once you've got a hang of the T sound, start to alternate. Eventually, you can create even more complicated patterns.

Combining Sounds

Once you've practiced your kick drum and hi hat sounds, you can put the two together to create a simple beat like:

• [Insert example beat here]

After that, you can move on to more complicated beats, like:

• [Insert more complex beats here]

And whatever you want to come up with!

Next Steps

Once you're familiar with that, then we can move on to different sounds.

Up next: The Snare!