TD3KW, what does MIDI CC#4 of the CY5 hihat do exactly?

[Romanp]

I have a Roland TD3KW kit. It has MIDI out. I’ve been triggering sounds in a hardware sampler and a workstation keyboard.
I get better dynamics from my snare pd8x when setting the ‘curve’ to exp2. Otherwise I can’t get ghost notes on the snare. It get’s loud straight away on other ‘curve’ settings.

Anyway back to my question. I understand that each pad sends a different MIDI note. I understand that the CY5 has two notes, one for the bow and one for the edge.
I assume that when I raise the hihat pedal to get an open hihat sound that it is merely changing the note sent from the same bow or edge zone.
Yes there is a different open hihat sound for the open bow and open edge zones when using the TD3 module.

I have recorded my drumming on my MOTIF XF7 triggering the Motifs sounds. The hihat seems to give me the same note when playing bow or edge triggering the Motif via MIDI.
Obviously a GM MIDI drum kit doesn’t have bow and edge hihat samples like a roland module. They usually just have closed hihat, open hihat and pedal hihat.

When I look at the MIDI data on the Motif’s MIDI edit page I see heaps of MIDI CC#4. It is the hihat pedal info.
How does this work?
I would have thought that the TD3 module would just send out different notes in response to the pedal position. Because the Motif isn’t going to respond to MIDI CC#4?

What is the purpose of this MIDI controller number data when recording to a sequencer. I imagine it is only relevant when the same MIDI data triggers the TD3 module. But I haven’t found anything in the manual to confirm or deny this.

Is this controller data relevant when triggering a standard MIDI keyboards drum kits? I wouldn’t have thought so. MIDI drum kits aren’t set up for this unique functionality. Surely it’s unique to the Roland TD brains.

Is this controller data relevant when triggering software virtual drum instruments?
I don’t own any drum software instruments yet but I plan on getting the abbey road series, toontracks superior with sdk packs and addictive and epiK drums.

I am certain that the drum softwares make use of the Roland CY5’s bow and edge zones. Or I hope they do for realism.

What does this MIDI CC#4 do? Why not just have the hihat pedal alter the resulting MIDI note sent out so that it can trigger an open edge vs an open bow or even the half way position could send a different note for the halfway hihat sounds that the TD3 brain also supports.

And to my frustration I can’t find any explanation in the manual? Why is this info hidden?
Please elucidate this for me.

One last thing, can I expect a relatively pain free plug and play experience with these drum instruments I mentioned. Are they compatible with my TD3 kit? Do they respond to bow and edge etc?
Thanks yall,
Roman.

Topic

[Romanp]

Anyone?

[John]

Hi,

in short what happens when you use your hihat together with Superior is this:
The plugin is set up to receive Trig notes from the pad to determine whether it’s a Bow or Edge hit. If you have a 3-zone hihat pad, you can Trig the hihat Bell as well.
Those 2 ( or 3) notes tell the plugin which kind of hit it is and the CC4 data tells the plugin the amount of openness it should have. Moving the pedal changes the CC4 and thus the openness.
A 3rd (or 4th) note is sent for pedal chicks.

BR,
John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Romanp]

Thanks for the reply John,
Greetings from New Zealand.

Ok, so the CC4 allows different sounds to be triggered instead of using different note values.
That must be how the Roland TD modules work as well. They trigger a different sound depending on the hihat pedal (CC4) position.
I don’t think us hardware sampler users could utilise the CC4 message to vary the hihat sounds.
It would have been simpler to have the hihat pedals position alter the note sent. Then us hardware sampler users or even software sampler users could simply assign different hihat samples to the different notes to vary the openness.
This CC4 method makes the ‘openess’ proprietary to samplers that can utilise it.

Maybe Kontact can utilise a MIDI controller to change the samples triggered.
Do you know if any software samplers allow this?

But hang on, there is something that goes against this claim. When my Roland TD3KW CY5 hihat pad is open (hihat pedal raised) it must be sending a different note because I can trigger the closed and open hihats on my Yamaha Motif XF7 by using the hihat pedal.
This means the hihat pedal is actually changing the note sent.
Because the Yamaha Motif XF7 is just a GM style MIDI map of drums.
The Roland TD3 module only allows you to alter the closed hihat note and the other two hihat notes for open and pedal stay 2 semitones above each other just like a GM MIDI drum kit.

So the pedal being fully up must send a note for the fully open hihat.

[John]

Well, I didn’t say that the Roland module does not send different notes when the pedal is in different positions. It does but it is rather limiting to just use those 4 notes (Edge + Bow pedal down and Edge + Bow pedal up) for all the different nuances of the hihat. It is how most hardware and software has been working, though. Superior 2 uses Transmuting between the stages of openness (usually 5 or 6 in Superior 2 libraries) when you move the pedal instead and makes for a more realistic experience, especially if you hit the hihat and then move the pedal up or down.

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[clem1107]

hi

In my Superior Drummer 3 only when I press the pedal and play the hat (i mean almost together) the open and close work at all the 8 points.

But say, when I have pressed the pedal (like half open) for some 2 seconds back or I just want a half open sound(so I don’t move my pedal from half and just maintain it) and then if I hit the hi-hat pad, I only get the tight-closed sound. On the contrary, like i said above, if the hit on the pad and press the pedal all at almost the same time, then I hear all the 8 articulations of the hi-hat.

But the same just works seamless with Addictive Drums 2 (if you have heard of it 🙂 I mean when I keep the pedal half or quarter open and keep it that way for hours and hit the pad, i get the openness effect!!)

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you,

Clement

[clem1107]

hello again!!

I have to kick myself here!! Actually, I had the pad tip and edge mapped/assigned to one of the actual hi-hat articulations rather than to the trigger. I mean, I had the pad mapped to the tight tip articulation of Superior Drummer.

Wherein I had to basically, assign/map the tip and edge (as my pad is 2 zone) of the pad to the tip trigger and edge trigger of Superior Drummer software.

My fault was that… every time I was trying to open the hi-hat and play the pad (after some 2 seconds, I have kept the pedal open), as i already had the tip of my hi-hat pad mapped to the ‘closed tip’ articulation and the SD3, now the SD3 software had no other way than to only trigger the closed tip articulation when I hit the HH pad, which is perfectly as I instructed Superior Drummer software to do…my bad :-(.

Nevertheless, I kept the pedal open, when I hit the pad I got only the closed tight tip sound and the Continuous Message coming from my HH CC Controller held no meaning or was over-ridden by the closed tip articulation. Absolute bummer here for me!!!

Anyway , that was a good learning for me.

So any of you want to use this continuous or variable hi-hat control, have the control assigned to CC4  in SD3 and have your pads assigned to the tip or edge or bell trigger rather than a articulation in SD3 (tip&edge&bell – if you have 3 zone hat pad; tip&edge/bell-  if you have 2 zone hat and obviously to any one of tip/edge/bell if you have a single zone pad) and just move the continuous controller hat pedal and the openness or closeness would be retained when you hit the pad as long as you hold the pedal. Even be it for 2 or 3 or 24 hours 🙂 If you have 2 zone pad like me, you can get around 16 articulations just like that by assigning the pads to the corresponding trigger in SD3.

On the other hand, if your hat pedal or drum module doesn’t send the cc or variable midi message along, then you have to rely on your module to output different notes for say, the open, h-open, closed (plus chic and splash) and then map them in SD3 to the articulation of your choice (the HH calibration of SD3 will not work in these drum kits) or what suits your playing style at that particular moment.

But not  having a continuous controller for the hi-hat pedal and with a setup like what I described above, you only get 3 articulations out of the hi-hat pad at a time from Superior Drummer. One suggestion is, to use/save different presets where each preset has a mapping to different set of HH articulations(3 articulation sets). And use them depending on the song. With 2 zone pads you may have sets of 6 articulations. Also depends on how many HH articulations(or midi notes) your module actually outputs. These modules do not output CC4 or CC1 signals.

Hey Good news !!! READ BELOW – If you can spend a few bucks (a very few!!) You can still get Continuous HH control with SD3:

Another way is to get something like AUDIOFRONT’s MidiExpression device or USB peripheral. (check in youtube or Audio Front company’s website). With this device, you can connect your HH pedal alone (i guess you must still buy a continuous hh controller- not sure. But first try your existing HH pedal) to the MidiExpression device TRS input (instead of connecting to your drum module)and that goes into your laptop’s USB port.

NOW, DO NOT PLUG THE CC HH PEDAL INTO YOUR DRUM MODULE FROM HERE ON. ALSO, REMEMBER TO DISCONNECT YOUR OLD or STOCK VERSION HH PEDAL (IF IT IS NOT CC AND YOU BOUGHT A NEW CC PEDAL) FROM YOUR DRUM MODULE AND KEEP IT ASIDE.

Now, this new HH CC PEDAL with the MIDI EXPRESSION Device connected to your LAPTOP’s USB will act as your new continuous HH Continuous Controller in Superior Drummer. So assign that controller as ‘HiHat pedal CC’ in your Superior Drummer (to CC#4 ideally) and then make your HH Pad (your HH Pad and rest of all the kit’s drum pads and cymbals must be connected to the Drum Module, which is in turn connected via USB to the computer/laptop and be used as usual but for the new HH CC pedal :-)). Now don’t forget to assign/map the HH Pads connected to the drum modules to ‘Hi-Hat Edge Trigger’ articulation of Superior Drummer (or to tip or bell trigger in case of a single zone HH Pad). In case of dual or triple zone HH pads you can assign to other zone triggers as well.

Now everyone can enjoy almost 27 articulations or at least 15 articulations(single zone HH pad) at a time from Superior Drummer (version 3 has 27 articulations!!).

Also do checkout Audio Front’s other devices like edrumin device (or the software version called DSP Trigger Plugin which just uses your Audio Interface’s TRS ports), which can take your pads too and provide many useful/better triggering capabilities and new features. One of which is  that you can use the POSITIONAL SENSING in Superior Drummer 3 with the Snare Pads (i don’t have any experience doing these. So please do call AudioFront or check youtube)

Thank you guys and Thanks Toontrack for the SUPERIOR DRUMMER SOFTWARE!!

Cheers!!

[Author]

Replies