Clone Hero drums setup with an electronic kit

Clone Hero plays drums with "any midi drum kit", in its own words, and its wiki documents the setup well. Six steps from the cable to Quick Setup, the default pad layout, Pro Drums and calibration in short, the fixes for kits that are not detected or miss hits, and a quick comparison with playing the same charts in WebEDrums. Every claim about Clone Hero links to the wiki page it comes from.

Published by WebEDrums Updated October 23, 2026

What do I need?

Clone Hero, listed for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS; v1.1.0.6142 was current when this page was checked.
An electronic kit with USB or MIDI out. The connection guide covers cables, drivers and ports. No adapter: the native MIDI mapper supports several notes per mapping with a velocity threshold each, and the wiki prefers a direct MIDI connection over a MIDI Pro Adapter. Plastic Rock Band and Guitar Hero kits take the path in the Rock Band guide.
On Windows, nothing else using the kit; the wiki suggests loopMIDI if you really need two programs at once.

How do I set up an electronic drum kit in Clone Hero?

Connect the kit and switch it on. Use a USB-B to USB-A cable, or a MIDI cable from the kit’s MIDI Out through an interface. On Windows, close other software that uses MIDI first.
Open your profile and choose Drums. Press Start to open your profile, then set Controller to Drums.
Select the kit as the MIDI input device. In the profile’s MIDI Settings pick your kit under Input Device; <none> only means nothing is selected yet.
Run Quick Setup. Follow the on-screen instructions, hitting each pad and cymbal as asked.
Add the extra zones in Mappings. Add rims, edges and bells as extra hits for the same lane, and map both the open and the closed hi-hat notes to Yellow Cymbal.
Map a pad to Start or Select. Optional, so you can pause from the kit; otherwise keep a controller or keyboard within reach.

Quick comparison

Clone Hero or WebEDrums for your kit?

Clone Hero

Pro: Free in full, with the biggest chart community
Pro: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS
Pro: A velocity threshold per MIDI note, and Dynamics FC on the leaderboards
Con: Install; no ChromeOS build
Con: Quick Setup, then Mappings for every rim, edge and bell
Con: Detection problems are often USB power, with a list of things to try

WebEDrums

Pro: Nothing to install: a Chrome or Edge tab, Chromebook included
Pro: The guided setup records each pad’s zones; Roland, Alesis and Yamaha presets fill them in one click
Pro: Pro drums and 2x kick, then loops, slow-down, a metronome and a heat map
Con: Drums only
Con: Three full plays a day free; Pro removes the limit
Con: Chrome or Edge (Firefox with limits, no Safari)

Try now for free WebEDrums as a Clone Hero alternative

Which pad plays which lane?

Quick Setup assigns the kit like this, according to the wiki's Drum Mapping Guide:

Clone Hero's default drum mapping
Clone Hero input	Your kit
Red Pad	Snare
Yellow Pad	High tom
Blue Pad	Middle tom
Green Pad	Low tom
Orange Pad	Kick
Yellow Cymbal	Hi-hat
Blue Cymbal	Ride
Green Cymbal	Crash

Two things catch people out: the Yellow and Blue pads scroll menus by default (Drum Pad Scrolling in Settings > General turns it off), and only the Yellow, Blue and Green cymbals exist, so a second crash is mapped as another Green Cymbal.

What about Pro Drums, Expert+, accents and ghosts?

Pro Drums wants a cymbal for a cymbal note and a pad for a tom note, so map cymbals to the cymbal inputs and toms to the pad inputs rather than doubling up; 5-lane charts and kits convert automatically. Expert+ is the 2x Kick modifier, chosen after you pick a song.
Accents and ghosts exist only in Pro Drums and, the wiki says, are "only properly playable on e-kits" because only MIDI kits report velocity. The per-note velocity thresholds in the mapper are how you stop a light tap counting as a hit, or make a ghost note reachable on a stiff pad.

How do I calibrate Clone Hero for drums?

Settings > Gameplay > Calibration. The Calibration Tool plays audio and visual cues, you play along on a pad, and it averages your offsets into the Audio Offset (notes against the audio; "Get Hardware Latency" gives a starting point) and the Video Offset (the hit window against the display: about 0 to 5 ms on a monitor, 30 to 100 ms or more on a TV). If your tick marks are widely spread, set them by hand with Show Hit Window on. With an e-kit, listen to the module's own sounds, which have no software delay, so only the song and the highway need lining up.

Why is Clone Hero missing hits, doubling them, or not seeing the kit?

Missed or doubled hits: map every zone of each pad and cymbal in Mappings, then adjust the thresholds in the kit or in the mapper. A MIDI monitor shows what the kit actually sends.
Nothing registers at all: "mostly power-related", says the wiki: another port, a powered hub, USB 2.0 instead of 3.0 or the reverse, power saving off, and on Windows USB selective suspend disabled.
Kit not in the Input Device list: a powered hub, drivers and Device Manager; if it is listed but will not map, close other programs and browsers listening for MIDI.

Does Clone Hero run on a Chromebook or a locked-down laptop?

There is no ChromeOS build; whether the Android build runs on a particular Chromebook and sees a USB kit there is not stated. On a work or school laptop where you cannot install software, Clone Hero is not an option.

Sources

Checked on October 16, 2026. If one of these pages has changed and this guide has not caught up, tell us on the contact page.

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Product names belong to their owners; WebEDrums is not affiliated with Clone Hero, YARG, Alesis, Roland or Yamaha.