Playing the High Hat Cymbal: Heels Up & Heels Down

Video Transcript

"Let's talk a little about heels up and heels down on the high hat pedal. Now there is different scenarios that call for heels up and heels down so if you are in maybe let's say for instance like a rock groove or a heavy kind of funk setting you might want, and you're kicking out eighth notes on the high hat you might want to play heels up because you can get more of a driving sound that maybe sounds like this. Now that would be heels up and that's the same as your bass. You are just using the rebound to bounce high enough. For heels down that might you might want to use that in come in maybe a style like jazz where you don't want to be as heavy on the high hat. Like if you are just swinging along and you can also get a splash effect off the high hat which sounds kind of like this. So you are playing a swing."