nice mix, hhats too loud. help.

[drewbass]

I have a great stereo mix I would prefer not to go back and redo. the hhats are a little too loud. any suggestions to dampen them w/out att. other instruments/vox?
drew

[dynomike]

De-esser?

[Family Hoof]

I was just going to suggest frequency dependent compression but a de-esser is a much simpler way of saying it.

[brokenchairs]

If you can, take out some of the mids. You probably won't need to do too much to it either. Hi hats hate mids. At least mine do.

If that doesn't work, maybe you can bury it in the mix. Like pan the hi hat closer to the guitar or keyboard or something. Just a thought.

[Slider]

If you have a computer you can line up the original Hihat track with the mix.
then flip the phase.
The more you turn up the out of phase hat, the more the hat volume drops in the mix.
This is a last resort kind of thing.
I don't think de-essing will help much.
the top end of everything will get in the way of getting just the hats.
You might be able to make it more bearable with EQ.

[vvv]

I just dealt with this problem last week.

The live stereo drum mix a collaborater sent me had too much hi-hat.

I used a good, steep LPF at about 900Hz, and made a copy of the track and compressed it a bit.

I then mixed it with the original track, thereby bring up the mix level from the bottom of the snare on down.

I also used a limiter to keep the levels under control.

[rhythm ranch]

Try a notch filter with very narrow badwidth.

[b3groover]

Add more cowbell.

[these arms are apes]

Add more cowbell.

that nearly made me piss myself.

[Mark Alan Miller]

Add more cowbell.

Oh, the cure for Hi-hat fever...

The out-of phase trick would work, only if it was lined up to the sample - otherwise it would comb filter and possibly sound worse!

I like the de-esser trick. Done it a few times. If you have a few kinds of split-band compressors or de-essers at your avail, try them all and see what works for you. Fast attack, fast release should be the place to start.
Remember that full-band compressors that have a de-essing emphasis in their sidechain will compress the whole spectrum based on the ess-band detector, and could really do some bad things to a whole mix. Use a band-pass or hi-pass style compressor/de-esser for this kind of thing!