Hi-hat

• 1. Introduction

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  The hi-hat is one of the most recognizable sounds in modern music, yet most listeners have never stopped to wonder what it actually is. At its core, a hi-hat is two cymbals mounted face-to-face on a stand, joined to a foot pedal that can press them together or let them hang apart. That single mechanical idea, foot controlling cymbal, sits at the center of rock, pop, jazz, blues, and hip-hop drumming. Press the pedal and the cymbals clap shut, producing a tight, clipped tick. Release it and strike them with a stick and they ring out with a shimmering, sustained wash of bronze. How did two cymbals on a metal stand become such an essential piece of the drum kit? The answer begins with a much stranger device called the "shoe" and winds through the jazz clubs of the early 20th century to a drummer named Papa Jo Jones who changed the rhythmic grammar of an entire genre.

• 2. From Clangers to Low-Boys

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  Before the hi-hat existed, drummers used something called a clanger: a small cymbal bolted to the rim of a bass drum and struck by a mechanical arm attached to the bass drum pedal. The clanger gave way to the "shoe," a contraption made of two hinged boards with cymbals fixed to their ends, clashed together by foot. Shoes came in a standard size of 10 inches, with some featuring heavy bells as wide as 5 inches. From the shoe evolved the Low-boy, also called the Low-sock, which placed a rod through a lower cymbal and attached a pedal to bring the cymbals together. The Low-boy is the most direct mechanical ancestor of the instrument drummers use today. Each generation of the device added control; each one moved the sound slightly closer to what a drummer's foot could actually shape in real time.

• 3. Papa Jo Jones and the Rise

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  Around 1926, Barney Walberg of the drum accessory company Walberg and Auge may have developed the first hi-hat that could be raised high enough to be played by hand as well as foot. That physical change opened the instrument to a new kind of player. The first recognized master of the raised hi-hat was "Papa" Jo Jones. Jones used the hi-hat to keep time with a ride rhythm, striking it as it opened and closed, and that technique is credited with inspiring the later invention of the ride cymbal as a separate piece of equipment. A 2013 Modern Drummer article credited Jones specifically with shifting time-keeping away from the bass drum and onto the hi-hat, giving jazz its "swing-pulse focus," and with being the first to use brushes on drums. The editor of a 2008 Jazz Profiles article also named Kaiser Marshall among those thought to have contributed to the instrument's early development.

• 4. How the Sound Works

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  A hi-hat's cymbals are typically small to medium in size, and the range of sounds they can produce is wider than most listeners realize. When the pedal is gently pressed without a stick, the cymbals produce a quiet, clipped sound drummers call a "chick," soft enough for a ballad or the opening bars of a guitar solo. Striking fully open hi-hats hard with sticks produces the opposite extreme, a loud crash used in heavy metal. Between those poles, a drummer controls sustain and volume through foot pressure alone: less pressure lets the cymbals rub together more freely, stretching the ring and adding volume for an accent or a crescendo. Opening the cymbals slightly changes the sound from a closed snap to something that approximates a ride cymbal's sustained shimmer. Adjusting the gap mid-note, closing the pedal just after striking, damps the ring entirely. Opening after the strike instead creates a shimmering effect at the tail of the note.

• 5. Genre to Genre

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  Jazz drummers commonly lift and lower the foot to clash the cymbals together without a stick, accenting beats 2 and 4 in a style distinct from any other genre. Rock drumming tends toward striking the cymbals on every beat, or on beats 1 and 3, while keeping them held closed. Shuffle time brings a pattern known as "cooking," in which the cymbals are struck twice in rapid succession; the first stroke is held closed, the cymbals are briefly allowed to open before the second stroke, and then a closing chick completes the pattern. In hip-hop, the hi-hat most often appears as a simple eighth-note pattern, though the source of that sound is frequently a drum machine rather than a live player. Producers record the sound of a real hi-hat and load it into a sampler, triggering it as programmed percussion. That migration from hardware cymbal to digital sample is one of the quieter revolutions in how the instrument has spread across recorded music.