Accents on “4-and”

[Steve Wallace]

Many of my songs have accents on the pickup before the downbeat. Seems to be quite difficult to do this in EZDrummer2. I have to take a MIDI and clip off nearly the first half of the phrase so I can drop it in with the pickup, and then put the accent / opening hit where it starts on the pickup.

Is there an easier approach to handling this?

Thanks.

Topic

[John]

Hi,

how are you recording your hits?

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Steve Wallace]

I’m not recording hits… just editing how MIDI files fall. I’m not a fan of entering hits on the MIDI files with the Record function. I just don’t feel that it fixes the problem of accents on the pickup.

As an example, Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” — the main riff of the song does not start on the down-beat, but on the “lead off” as some drummers call it.

I would like EZDrummer to have an option to do this automatically.

Since you do not (yet), I just hack up an existing MIDI file and put a small slice across the beginning of the measure, then have opening hit turned on and maybe increase the hits on certain drums so they all fall right on the lead-off before the downbeat.

Any of this make sense? I just want to know if someone has an easier way. If I just record a hit, then there is very often another hit of the same drum/cymbal on the downbeat so you get double-hits that don’t make sense.

Thanks.

[Author]

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