Greetings, knowledgeable colleagues:
My cry for help involves discontinued legacy gear, so I think the answer to this one may reside deeper in the vaults than most folks go. Nevertheless, here it is:
I’d like to control BFD3 from a Roland V-Drums mesh pad kit that has a (now-ancient) TD-6V brain. We’re talking 5-pin MIDI here – I have that running into a MOTU Micro-Lite which is plugged into my Mac Studio.
The brain seems to be functioning as expected, both in terms of its on-board sounds and its ability to transmit MIDI note data to the Micro-Lite and on into BFD.
I have tweeked a number of settings to map MIDI notes, dial in sensitivity, eliminate latency and crosstalk, and so forth.
Ultimately, it’s wonky – it aint like playing a real set of drums, that’s for sure.
But I’m hoping that I can get the trigger kit to a point where it can at least be helpful within the context of the apartment scenario where I’m using it (a real set of drums just not being in the cards here).
But with all of the adjustments I’ve made, I seem to have hit a snag:
I think that I have realized that the TD-6V hi-hat pedal controller does NOT send a unique MIDI note out that differentiates it (to BFD) from the hi-hat cymbal pad.
When I listen to the TD-6V through its headphone jack I can hear the pedal controlling the on-board hi-hat behavior (the hi-hat sounds like it “opens and closes.”)
But when auditioning the kit connected to BFD3, the hi-hat pedal does not appear to trigger any note other than the cymbal assignment – if I strike the pad I get the assigned 3/4 Shank articulation, and if I press the pedal I hear the same sound.
I sweated that one for a while before then realizing that the hi-hat pedal doesn’t appear to have a controller identity of its own. At least, I couldn’t find one to map – either by pressing the pedal (which should call it out to the TD-6V) or scrolling through the pad list manually on the unit (using Shift-Right Arrow).
The only hi-hat pad choices I can find are for the HH Hit and HH Rim. I tried mapping the “Rim” to BFD’s hi-hat “foot closed” articulation but didn’t appear to have success with that (which alas wasn’t unexpected).
So I have two questions:
- Can anyone either confirm the impression that the hi-hat pedal only controls the behavior of the brain’s on-board sounds only, and that this will never work completely – or (more hopefully) refute that impression with advice on how to set this up properly to control BFD’s full hi-hat modeling
and
- If it is indeed the case that no, the hi-hat pedal only talks to the TD-6V – then I might have to consider an alternative controller, and I solicit your experiences with any that you have used successfully with a similar configuration.
Thanks, everyone!
