The stereo field is your playground. And you should invite your hihats to the party too.
Your hihats don’t have to sit in the same place in the stereo field. Let them move around and create some excitement for your house track.
And one simple solution is:
*drum roll, please…
Use an auto-panner.
Watch the video tutorial
Fruity PanOmatic - the quick one
I’m all about fast decisions when working on stuff in the studio. One plugin that I’m really grateful for when adding stereo excitement to my house hihats is FL Studios' fantastic plugin called Fruity Pan O’matic. That is one awesome piece of Audio tool. Big fan here.
It's pretty straightforward.
Load up the plugin on the mixer track where the hihats are routed.
In PanOmatic there are a few knobs.
Locate the LFO area.
Select the LFO to modulate the panning.
Now you can start playing with the amount of panning modulation applied and the rate of the LFO.
Auto-panning has been applied.
Listen to how the hihat moves from left to right. That’s some good ear candy!
TIP: Create an automation clip from the rate knob and increase it over time. For example, in a build-up before the drop. It will add some tension as the panning of the hihat goes faster.
But we can go a step further and get more control over the auto panning.
Cableguys ShaperBox panning - fun with patterns
If you are like me and want a bit more control, then Cableguys has a solution: Their Panning module in the ShaperBox plugin.
Here you can draw an LFO pattern for the auto-panning. You can split up the frequency band and apply different settings for the panning.
I like to turn off the tempo syncing and let that “bad boy” run free.
I set the LFO pattern to a slow rate.
Then I start with one of the built-in pattern presets. Some minor tweaking is applied to the shape of the pattern.
Sometimes I also smoothen out the LFO with the smooth knob. Sick!
NOTE: Save your pattern presets for later use. It saves you a ton of precious studio time.
The ShaperBox panning plugin is a great way to make your hihats sound more organic.
Automation clips - manual, but very creative results
You can go one step further and create an automation clip for the panning of your House hihats. Now you can draw in a more complex pattern and also a longer one.
I do this sometimes. Especially when I want full control over the panning.
So this technique is not auto-panning - rather manual panning. But the process is very similar to using the patterns in the ShaperBox plugin.
Sum up
I hope this blog post inspired you to create better and more interesting House hihats with auto-panning.
Remember, there is no right or wrong when it comes to applying auto-panning and panning in general to your hihats.
Just do what sounds good to you! :-)
