Not a new topic, but it is one that has not been resolved – at least I cannot find a resolution.
“How to get Roland Hi Hats to work with Groove Agent (5.2)?”
Superior Drummer and EZ Drummer and Addictive Drums all work flawlessly with the Roland TD-50x with VH-14D Hi Hats! Why can’t Groove Agent?
If anyone has a solution (STEINBERG), please let me know. There are so many great and unique things about Groove Agent that I love, but as a drummer, not being able to play the thing with a kit is just ridiculous! As far as I can see, this Roland Hi Hat problem has been an issue going on almost ten years! I know Steinberg is owned by Yamaha, but Roland e-kits are still some of the most widely used!
I use Cubase extensively, and like its integration with Groove Agent. It’s just this Hi Hat issue that pushes me to use other plugins. 
OK, so I have come extremely close to making it workable.
- In Show Pattern view – select “Use pattern midi port for pattern pads,” from the little midi icon in the lower left of the interface. This will keep the patterns from being triggered.
- In the Instrument view – select “Hardware Controller Mapping,” from the lower right of the 16 pads. Looks like a stick hitting a pad.
- From the arrow next to the little stick hitting a pad icon, select “E-Drum Controller 01.” Not perfect mapping, but a good start.
- From there, in the instrument window you will see settings for the Hi Hat – Shank, Tip, Foot and HiHat Open.
Not as smooth as SD3 or the Roland TD-50 itself, but at least it works!
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Hey there,
I’ll look at the shank/tip/foot settings when get a chance. I Just thought I’d chime in with my experience (I have also gone your route with using it with an ekit for the most part)
I use an edrumin set up at home, works amazing with slate drums and superior drummer 3, but I was so hankering for the Simon Phillips sound, I threw caution to the wind and got them. All drums are AMAZING and absolutely Simon Phillips signature sound. Albeit missing some articulations which I consider the norm (choke on ride, rim/rimshots on toms etc)
Hihat was a pig to set up. I ended up going with the midi note per bow/edge/stage of open/closed route. It was really time consuming to set up, but got there in the end. This has been the best way for me so far.
But it pales in comparison in terms of playability compared to the aforementioned drum samplers. With foot/cc data, the sound in jittery going between transitions. With some adjustments to playing, you can make it work for sure. How good the drums and kit in general sound, kinda makes up for it.
Hey cool! Let me know what you end up with.
How about some instructions based on what you guys have learned? It would be so useful to not come to the end of a thread and read “Let me know how it turns out” or something like that and then find the next post blank. 
Sorry for late reply. I got side tracked and forgot to come back to you.
What I learned was, there’s no fix that I can figure, the hihat engine in GA5 seems to be geared toward keyboard players programming from keys. i.e. using the various stages of open/closed per bow/edge as notes. But from a hihat on an edrum, there’s only bow articulation available as a CC controlled note.
So triggering from a Roland kit using a VH14D, you’d have to set both bow and edge at the same note (I think it’s Bb 1 if I am not mistaken) for it to be somewhat controllable. Unless Roland offer Note based transition from open and closed. In my case, I use an edrumin10 which does. So that’s 6 stages of close to open and a midi note per stage x 2 (bow and edge)
Note, it’s a pig to set up, even even once done, the result is at best, jittery.
Now, all may not be lost. There’s a chap on edrum forums called Martin Trommler, who’s a bit of a whizz when it comes to fixing edrum issues. I would suggest hitting him up with your query, as I do believe he offers one for Groove Agent - Hi Hat issues.
This is the link to him on some e-drum forum I found.
https://www.vst-e-drumming-forum.de/u1_Martin-Trommler.html
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Thanks for the reply. I’ve have the drums mapped out in GA5 and also got the Hi-Hat working pretty good (not perfect as in SD3, but hey). As with BFD3, I need to make Hi-Hat adjustments within the TD-50x, but again, I can get it working reasonably well. Being a drummer, I like to record via the e-kit and love the Simon Phillips samples in GA5, and the same goes for the Peter Erskine samples in BFD3. Clearly SD3 has the best e-drum integration by far, but none of there libraries come close to the Phillips and Erskine samples (at least that I have found). If I could just get the Simon Phillips and Erskine samples in SD3, I’d be extremely happy (I know, good luck with that)! Thanks again!
Hi again,
What did you do to get it working, okay-ish. Am I to assume you assigned both bow and edge to the one CC controlled note?
Totally with you on Simon’s drums, man alive. I have a couple of SDX for Superior drummer as well as the entire library for Steven Slate Drums, all are very very nice. But there’s just something about Simon Phillip’s drum sounds that nothing comes close to on any other library I have heard.
I found a mapping for the TD-50 (sure it’s pretty much the same as the TD-30) and it seems to works well, but I did need to remap a couple of pads. I remapped the “snare rolls” and any pattern(s) to unused midi notes (BTW, using the Init Simon Phillips Jazz Drums Kit). Made a few adjustments to the Hi-Hat settings in the TD-50, and it’s pretty playable! Now, just need to see if there is any way to choke the cymbals!
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