Hihat control via MIDI? Can it be done?!?

[Darthsleader]

Hi Guys,

Somebody help me!

I'm no MIDI novice and have done some pretty thinking-outside-the-box Midi applications over the years, but this one has me stymied.

Is there ANY WAY to play the various hihat articulations (closed/open/foot) via Midi? I want to use my DrumIt5 as a module for my Zendrum and TrapKat controllers, but so far, can't.

In Roland/Yamaha/Alesis land, closed hh has a note number (42), open hh has a number (44?) and foot chick has a number (46?). And, they are in a "mute group", so playing any artic will shut off any currently playing notes in the group (this is how it "closes" an open hh note).

Now I know that 2Box doesn't handle the hihat this way- there is no separate note number for the various open-to-closed sounds; that's fine. I was planning to record my own samples of closed hits (tip of stick for the quieter half, shoulder for the louder) and open hits (same stick use) and foot chick, and then simply assign the Closed sample to the hihat channel, and the other two to Aux channels (tom rims), and assign all of them to a mute group.

2Box doesn't HAVE mute groups! ?!?!?

My next idea was to set the note numbers in such a way that the closed sound also happens to occupy the same note number as one of the cymbal pads' Choke (the 4th Midi note number on any cymbal channel), and then assign the Open hh sound to that cymbal, so the Closed hits would choke it. Well, I tried this also... for some reason, it does choke the sound a TINY bit but definitely not all the way. I'm guessing it's because the note message generated by the Zendrum is extremely short- virtually instantaneous. I assume if I were on a keyboard, and hit and held the note, it would choke all the way... but at any rate, not working.

Has anyone found some sort of workaround here? Hihat is a pretty key feature for drum modules, and since it appears 2Box is moving in the direction of being a module-only market presence, they're really shooting themselves in the foot to not support Midi controllers!

Help!

Jer

[Darthsleader]

SOLVED.

Now, for the record, I'm hoping there's a cleaner method than this... but here's how I did it.

I have a unit called the MIDI Solutions Event Processor. It's a little box that has MIDI in and MIDI out. You connect to your computer, and you can program it to do various MIDI messages on command.

I programmed one Zendrum trigger to play open hh sound, and programmed another for closed hh sound. (I still need to record samples of these sounds, but I used a shaker and crash cymbal for my experimenting).

In 2Box, I put the closed hh (*shaker) sound on the hihat channel, and the open hh (*crash) on Cym3.

In the MIDI Solutions processor, I programmed the following commands:

-upon playing closed hh pad, send Choke note number for Cym3 (meaning this pad will "close" any open hh notes currently playing).
-upon playing open hh pad, send Choke "Note Off" for Cym3 (meaning this will undo the choke that was caused by playing closed hh, allowing the open hh notes  to ring out).

I hope this helps somebody else out there, because this took a couple hours of my evening to iron out! Haha. The difficulty was with the way the Zendrum triggers work- it sends a note-on message, but no note-off. So if you use it to choke, after choking a cymbal ONCE, it then chokes every note thereafter. Hence the "note off" command on open hh. I was actually surprised that worked, because since the hh open note triggers the choke-off NEXT, I assumed it would play a choked note and THEN release the choke for subsequent notes. But for some reason it works great.

Jer