A reverse hi hat is an open hat, half-open hat, or shaker hit played backwards, so its decay turns into a short hiss that rises into the next hit. Reverse the sample, trim it so it ends on the attack, cut it to one or two 16th notes long, and place the end exactly on the snare or downbeat you want to push into. It is the smallest reversed transition there is, and the reversal itself is lossless.
What does a reversed hi hat add to a groove?
A forward hi hat marks time: a crisp attack, then a short metallic decay. Flipped, that envelope inverts. The clip starts near silence, opens up into cymbal wash, and cuts off at the moment the stick originally hit the hat. The result is a quick inhale just before whatever it lands on.
That inhale is what makes reversed hats useful. They create anticipation inside a single beat, without the size of a full transition. A reverse cymbal swell lifts a whole section and a reverse snare fits a fill, but a reversed hat works at the scale of one hit in the groove. You can drop one before every snare in a loop, or just before the snare that ends a phrase, and the pattern gains forward motion without a new sound taking over.
Because hats are mostly high-frequency noise with no strong pitch, a reversed hat also fits over any key. That makes it one of the few reversed sounds you can place almost anywhere without a tuning check.
How do you make a reverse hi hat, step by step?
- Pick an open hat or shaker. The decay is the effect. A closed hat is almost all attack and flips into a tick; an open or half-open hat gives you a real swell.
- Reverse the hit. The tail becomes the rise and the attack moves to the end.
- Trim the end to the attack. Cut any silence after the loudest instant. Otherwise that silence sits in front of the swell and the peak lands late.
- Trim the front to one or two 16ths. Divide 60,000 by your BPM for one beat in milliseconds, then by four for a 16th. At 120 BPM, a 16th is 125 ms; at 90 BPM, about 167 ms.
- End it on the target hit. Put the clip’s final instant on the snare, kick, or downbeat. Add a few milliseconds of fade at the front.
- Set the level under the forward hats so it reads as part of the kit.
Step 3 is the one that causes most timing complaints, and it applies to every reversed sound. The longer explanation, with loop-point notes, is in how to reverse a sample.
Where do reversed hats sit in the bar?
On the 16ths immediately before a hit, ending on it. The reversed hat’s loudest instant is the arrival, so the placement question is always what it lands on.
Four placements cover most uses. A one-16th pickup into beats 2 and 4 pushes every backbeat and gives a loop a slight forward lean. A two-16th pickup into beat 1 of a new phrase marks the start without a full fill. A single pickup on the last 16th of a section, landing on the downbeat of the next one, is a quiet transition that sits underneath bigger ones. And a pickup landing on an off-beat hat, rather than on the snare, creates syncopation that the forward pattern alone would not have.
Use them sparingly. A reversed hat before every 8th note turns into a constant swishing texture and the rhythm blurs. Before every backbeat is about the densest that still reads as pickups. In most arrangements, a handful per section is enough to make the groove feel deliberate.
Reversed hats also pair well with a reverse snare: the hat pickup runs a 16th before the reversed snare’s peak, and both land on the same downbeat, so the transition gets a high-frequency edge on top of the snare’s body.
Which tool should you use to flip the hat?
Reversal is a fixed operation, so every route produces the same audio. Pick based on where the sample is and what you need to do next.
| Route | Best when | What you can do | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Browser tool | The hat sample is already on your computer | Record or import, reverse, A/B, download WAV | Free |
| Phone app | You are recording a real hat or shaker away from the studio | Record or import, reverse, change speed and pitch, add effects, export | Free to reverse; one-time $4.99 for the rest |
| DAW | The hat is already in your session | Reverse in place, trim and place on the grid | Whatever you own |
The free audio reverser is the quickest path for a sample on disk. Drop in an MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG, or WebM file, or record straight from the mic, and it reverses in the browser tab with nothing uploaded. A/B the forward and reversed versions, then download a WAV. It flips the whole file, so trim it to length in your DAW.
On a phone, Reverse Audio PRO is handy for recording a real shaker or hat in a room. Reversing is free. A one-time $4.99 purchase, not a subscription, adds speed from 0.25× to 3.0×, pitch across ±12 semitones, ten effects, and MP3/M4A export. Platform steps are at reverse audio on iPhone and reverse audio on Android.
In a DAW you reverse in place and hear the pickup against the loop while you nudge it, which matters with clips this short.
How do you keep reversed hats from sounding messy?
Keep them short, keep them below the forward hats, and let something land on their end.
Length is the first fix. Stretched past a beat, a reversed hat loses its metallic character and turns into a generic noise sweep. One or two 16ths keeps it recognizably a cymbal. Level is the second: reversed hats have no attack at the front, so they sound bigger soloed than they do in context. Set them by ear in the full mix, a few dB under the main hat pattern, not in solo.
The third fix is the landing. If nothing hits where the reversed hat ends, its abrupt cutoff can sound like a click. A snare, kick, or forward hat on that spot masks the cut and makes the pickup and the hit read as one event.
Two tone moves help. A high-pass filter removes any low rumble from the sample, which sounds odd rising out of nothing. And small pitch changes act as a tone control: down a few semitones for a darker, softer pickup, up for a tighter one. Once you have a version you like, bounce it at one and two 16ths for your usual tempos and keep them in a samples folder.
Like every reversal, flipping a hat does not reduce quality. It only reorders the samples, which is why reversing audio twice gets you back the exact original. Keep working files as WAV and compress once, at the end.