Hi,

I am hoping to use hydrogen with an external electric drum kit and megadrum trigger-to-midi converter. Can someone tell me whether hydrogen supports cymbal chokes and variable hi hat

Cheers,

Paul

Hi Paul!

No, hydrogen has no special features for chokes. It handles every hit the same way..
What's "variable hi-hat"?

I suppose I can get the cymbal choke sent as a separate, silent midi note and put it in the same mute group so it stops the cymbal.

"Variable hi hat" means the hi hat hit responds differently depending on the depth of the pedal press so you can get variable "sizzle" sounds when it is half-closed. Roland and Yamaha electronic drum kits (and the megadrum) implement this by sending poly aftertouch midi control messages but I am afraid the details are still rather hazy to me.

Thanks for the swift response,

Paul

Hi!

No, hydrogen does not understand such hihat magic. It could work if the controller sends multiple velocity values.

i have one idea to simulate the hihat pedal.

if the pedal sends midi messages e.g cc. than we can program an intern midi note switch to map notes to other instruments.

an example.
you have to arrange a set of open hihat instruments.
hihat instrument
1. full open
2. half open
3. 1/4 open

now we say this tree instruments are one open-hihat super-instrument.
here we can switch incoming midi mote on messages via an other incoming midi signal to every instrument.
e.g the hihat foot controller give us cc. 0-126 than we can switch between maximal 127 instruments. in our example we switch 3 open hihat intruments. cc msg 0-42 = instrument 1, cc 43-84 intrument 2 and cc 85 -127 instrument 3.
i think this is easy to implement.
it could be helpfully if we now a bit more about foot controller midi msgs.

megadrum uses CC04 for highhat openness. wolkes approach should work great (was hoping to use it myself). The main challenge I faced was trying to find samples for the various levels of high hat openness. If anyone has access to some free or cheap ones I would love to hear about it!

Only confusion to me is that it "seems" like this feature already exists in the midi input device selection form (or whatever its called). I have not tested it but it looks like it would transform one note into another depending on the last CC message received?