The world of music production can be a real art form with a lot of time spent creating dynamic and interesting drum sequences – especially hi-hat sequences, as they tend to be programmed with heavily repeated notes.
Therefore, it is extremely important to add some movement to them to avoid looking robotic. Movement can be achieved through humanization, using swing and velocity adjustments to create a great groove; However, there are other creative techniques we can implement to spice up our hats.
In this article, we’ll explore how to create interesting pitchshifting by applying multiple LFOs to modulate the pitch. We’ll start by adding the Shifter and LFO devices to the hi-hats, then explore how we can connect the LFO device to a parameter on the Shifter to modulate it.
Additionally, we’ll consider applying additional modulation with Shifter’s own LFO section to achieve an interesting and unique result with a comprehensive number of controls to customize the multiple modulation layers.
1. Create a hi-hat sequence
Insert a Drum Rack preset (or create a Drum Rack with your own samples) on an empty MIDI track. Program a simple drum beat with a few repeated hi-hat notes. You can get creative and use some triplets as well.
2. Build an effects chain
Add the Shifter and LFO Audio Effect devices to the hi-hat chain in the Drum Rack so we can start applying pitch modulation to the hi-hats. Make sure Shifter mode is set to Pitch.
3. Modulate the pitch change
To apply LFO modulation to the Shifter, press the Map button on the LFO device. Select the Coarse parameter on the Shifter device as the modulation destination. Now, to control the applied modulation of the LFO, you can set the frequency to Beat Sync and the desired value (eg 1 bar). We can also adjust the depth to taste.
4. Get creative with modulation
To further control the modulation of the LFO, we can apply minimum and maximum values to it to move between the two. Do this under the Multimap browser. On the Shifter device, set the window to 10.0ms and experiment with additional modulation by Shifter’s own LFO section with the phase set to 180 degrees.