Unstable half-open, missing chick or accidental splash: what does MIDI show?
Plug your kit in
Don’t guess, measure. The kit check is open to everyone and needs no account.
Check my kitThe hi-hat is one of the most complex elements of an electronic kit. A single pedal has to convey the movement from open to closed, usable positions in between, the chick and sometimes the foot splash. Listening to one note is not enough when a gesture is misread.
The eDrumWork hi-hat diagnostic records the notes, the controller state at each stroke and, where available, the movement between events.
Three distinct problems
- Half-open covers a tiny range, or jumps straight between open and closed.
- A deliberate closing motion does not produce the expected chick.
- Ordinary pedal movement creates a splash, or an intended splash never comes out.
All three can fall under D10, but they do not necessarily call for the same fix. The result must keep both the requested state and the events actually received.
Test as a sequence
Start with stable positions: closed, open, then held half-open. Play repeated bow hits in each state. Then play several deliberate chicks, followed by a few full foot splashes.
Do not mix everything up in an improvisation. One instruction per phase ties notes and controller changes to a known intention.
For open or closed strokes, the controller value at Note On may be enough. Chick and splash can depend on the pedal's path: how fast it closes, when it changes direction, and a pedal note. If the module does not send that information, it simply cannot be observed, which does not make it wrong.
Making the splash harder to trigger may also make an intended splash hard to play. Moving the closed zone may shorten the half-open range. Retest every state after a change. Names and MIDI behavior differ across pad and module combinations.
eDrumWork can document a repeatable mismatch without claiming an electrical or mechanical cause.