Hihat pedal control

Does anyone know a practical way of getting a foot pedal to control sampled drums - e.g the Natural Sounds kit, so that a MIDI-connected pedal could open and close the hihats just like a real drummer would do?. I have an Akai MPD16 drumpad, so what I would like to do is tap on what would be the closed hihat pad and press the foot pedal to switch to open hihat, and have it choke when the pedal is released.

I have two MIDI footswitch inputs on my BCR2000 and have connected one to trigger a kick sample and if the other one could work like a hihat pedal that would be a much more natural way to drum - or, of course, I could use the sustain pedal already connected to my master keyboard to control this, but either way I'll be using a MIDI event to control this. Samplers in use are Kompakt and VSampler, under S3PE.

Of course, if any of the commercially-available drum libraries tackle this, I'd consider purchasing one. I don't think my drumming will ever not suck, but this seems worth trying as a partial remedy. Yes, I know I could buy a Roland drum kit, but space and money are constraints.