Choking Alesis cymbals

[LooseSends]

I'm having a rough time figuring out how to get choke working with Alesis 10" dual-zone cymbals (from a Surge kit).

From what I understand it's a 2-zone cymbal with a bow piezo and a switch on the edge.

The control software setting for one is different from the manual, showing key numbers instead of notes in the manual, but I assume I would set the choke setting to the corresponding key in Addictive Drums 2 (currently setup as Crash 2 which is key 80, and the choke is key 79).

What confuses me is that the Edge triggers just as often or more so than Bell is when playing the bell. I have to have both set as Crash (80) or else it silences on some hits. Grabbing the choke sensor doesn't work at all even when assigned to Choke in ADD2.

I'm probably not understanding it properly as I haven't found any discussion yet scouring the forum so I'm hoping for a bit of help here.

[Rabidreject]

It’s probably not hugely helpful but I have noticed stran get choking behaviour with my alesis dm cymbals as well. I’m assuming it’s something to do with the note assignments for the edge zone because the choke works great on my ride cymbal and worked really weirdly on my crash. It was playing the choked cymbal hit sound when I choked it. I’m not explaining it well and don’t rele know how to but essentially when I choked the cymbal it would play a sound like I had hit it and the choked it, rather than the choking the cymbal hit that was already playing. I hope that makes sense.
I noticed when I then had to switch my cymbals because my ride broke the dual zone cymbal I was previously using as a crash and didn’t work as stated above, was plugged into the ride cymbal slot and works great just as my ride did before that.
Therefore as I know it’s not the actual cymbal that wasn’t choking I’m assuming it is the midi mapping.
Have you tried reassigning the midi values? So making sure it’s set to Addictive drums and then click on the cymbal picture on the kit? I don’t know if that will reset the midi notes to what they are meant to be. Iv never used addictive d so I don’t really know.
I never got my crash choke figured out but I don’t really use it so I’m not all that fussed. Let me know if you get it sorted though!

[LooseSends]

Hey thanks for the reply. I pretty much have mapped the ED notes/keys to the ADD2 values for everything. It's worked out great for everything else, even a bunch of transition level sounds for high hat which is great because I had to dig out an old Roland FD-7 in the meantime and it's great being able to tweak everything to the degree you can with this ED10.

For choke I had it mapped to the key for crash2 choke on aftertouch, like any other assignment is but no dice. I think I had the same thing as you where grabbing the choke area sounded like a HH tip hit. And hitting that area while playing splashes out at max sometimes. Think it has something to do with the dual zones, or maybe how sketchy those choke sensors get when banged on over time.

I'm going to dive into it a bit more tomorrow and see.

[Rabidreject]

Hmm yeah. I noticed last night something about this actually. The ride choke just works. I just set up all my gear on my brand new ED10 so all the settings were set from scratch. The ride cymbal just worked straight away in terms of choke but I went to go choke my crash yesterday and got a Tom sound for some reason lol

Would you like me to screenshot my ride so you can see what mapping it’s using and stuff?

Other than that I don’t think I can really help, I don’t really choke my cymbals anyway usually so probably wouldn’t have bothered to set it up had it not worked. Hence the lack of choke on my crashes lol

Let me know if you want me to screenshot the app so you can see what’s going on tho

[LooseSends]

No it couldn't hurt. Maybe I'm just missing some setting or overlooking something.

If it's no hassle for you, of course.

[Rabidreject]

Do you know what? I got my new 20" ride from diamond Dave and wow it looks beautiful, was really well built AND came with a cymbal bag and rotation stopper etc. Looks great - plugged it in and firstly I clocked one of my TRS cables broke (I do hope that isnt why my ride ceased to work - doh!) and I went to choke it and boom a floor tom sound. I checked to see the one that was working and it no longer chokes either - I really cant figure this choke thing out. I can set it to make a hit THEN coke sound just by choking it but no ability to choke an already hit sound. Quite annoying!

[Rabidreject]

Yeah thats really annoying, I cant get any of my cymbalks to choke now - they all just sound either another drum hit or if I go through and change thre mapping it changes it to a hit then choke. this is all in EZ drummer by the way,. Would be great if someone could help us sort this choke issue out - its definitely not just alesis cymbals because my diamond cymbal and millenium cymbals (ok the milenium and alesis ones are identical apart from the print but yeh).

Which alesis cymbals is it you are having problems with choking mate? Mine are those midelli ones that are half plastic half rubber and then same with milenium and then a 20' LV ride from diamond drums

[Rob]

Soery. I've been busy. Can you please start with a screenshot of your eDRUMin settings for one of your cymbals?

[LooseSends]

Yeah thats really annoying, I cant get any of my cymbalks to choke now - they all just sound either another drum hit or if I go through and change thre mapping it changes it to a hit then choke. this is all in EZ drummer by the way,. Would be great if someone could help us sort this choke issue out - its definitely not just alesis cymbals because my diamond cymbal and millenium cymbals (ok the milenium and alesis ones are identical apart from the print but yeh).

Which alesis cymbals is it you are having problems with choking mate? Mine are those midelli ones that are half plastic half rubber and then same with milenium and then a 20' LV ride from diamond drums

I've got the same ones, yeah. Think they're 10". I do have a Lemon 18" ride on the way though.

Rob, if Rabid doesn't get to it first I'll try to post mine later when I'm able.

[Rob]

For EZ Drummer, I'm pretty sure that you should be using aftertouch. Hard to say really though, because Toontrack doesn't let me read forum posts for EZ Drummer because I don't own it. I guess the hundreds of dollars I've given them for Superior Drummer is not enough.

Assuming aftertouch is the way to go, your cymbal chock should be setup as follows, although it doesn't matter what number or note is shown.

image.png (3.22 KiB) Viewed 1081 times

The important thing is that the Note Control is greyed out. This means that it'll only send aftertouch messages. If you click on the 'Choke' label, lighting up the control, then it will send a NoteOn/Off message in addition to aftertouch, and that's not what you want.

Please keep in mind that if you are running EZD from Ableton Live, it won't send aftertouch and you will have no way to choke your cymbals.