How to Play an Open High Hat

Video Transcript

"JOEL SIEGEL: So we're going to bring attention to the most special quality about the hi-hat, which is the fact that you can either play it closed or open. All right? Now, when striking with the stick, we'd already went over the sounds that you can get when it's closed. But you also can do sounds when it's open. This, as you can see, is hitting the top of the cymbal with the bead of the stick. This may not be a very attractive sound to you. Hi-hats aren't really meant to play just this in repetition or it's not really a highlighted way that you're going to be playing the hi-hat. But when you put it into context, you can get some interesting sounds. So what I'm going to do now is go between opening and closing the hi-hat. This is getting into some more advanced techniques that we'll be talking about later. But this is how the open sound of the hi-hat can be incorporated. You can hear just that really kind of old timey singsong, so if you're ever on a gig and somebody calls out rag time feel or Dixieland feel, stuff like that, two beat, these are the applications that you're going to often find yourself using...that open hi-hat with the beat at the tip. If you like it, use it in your music however you see fit."