I have a backing track that starts with just bass for a few measures, then a guitar joins for a few measures, then a pad, then finally the drums (I'm playing piano and singing over this track).

I would really like to find a way to insert some hi hats on quarter notes for the first few measures before the drums come in.

Any suggestions on doing this?

Thanks!

Welcome to the forums.
You can probably do this with MIDI on the melody track.
Select the Plugins tab, click on the melody track and set the MIDI channel to 10.
Then enter the notes on the stave that correspond to your desired drum sound.

For info, I think the closed hi-hat is F#3 and the open hi-hat is G3. You will need to experiment.

Closed hi-hat is MIDI note #42, foot close hi-hat is MIDI note #44, and open hi-hat is MIDI note #46. In BIAB and in many plugins/synths this would end up as F#3, G#3, and A#3, but the octave shown may vary as that particular part of MIDI wasn't completely standardized.

Some companies say Middle C is C4, others say it's C3, and a few say it's C5. This means the lowest possible note is either C-2, C-1, or C0, with I think C-1 being the most common (though I may be wrong).


Either way, another suggestion for adding some hi-hats would be to use an audio loop. It may sound slightly more realistic that way (depending on the loop), but Videotrack's method is probably a little easier.

Thanks Simon for clarifying the MIDI notes. I took a guess by just listening to the output as I changed the note position. Precision guesswork

Well your precision guesswork was just about on the mark, not bad I say!

Thanks so much for that; I had already exported the whole track to a .wav and then used a DAW to add drums, which was super quick and easy); but this is super cool to be able to do it in here (and I wouldn't have figured out anything like this in a million years).

Silly question (I'm a noob at this app and the user interface is a tad busy and confusing for me); how do I make the notes #? And every note I try to add on the bass clef lands in the treble clef on low ledger lines (not sure if that matters just doesn't look like your pic)

Thanks again for the help!

Applying a sharp (#) to a note:
This might be related to the key signature of the song, however, you should be able to change by right-clicking on the note (editable notation mode) and selecting Force Accidental to a Sharp.

Notes on Bass Clef:
Probably the clef split point is set too high.

To test, in notation options, set the Clef Split point to C5 and enter a note on the bass clef and see if it displays correctly.