Free drum software!! Worth looking into.

[Money Shot]

Hey dudes. In case anyone didn't know, there's a free drum machine you can download called Hydrogen. It's for Windows, Mac, and Linux and you might want to check it out. Unless you have something better like drums for hell or anything. But it's pretty sweet. Just make sure you set the level on the mixer so that none of the snare beats clip. That way, when you export the audio file and put it into your mixing software, it doesn't sound choppy and what not.

Drums based originally from Without Judgement (Death) by Gene Hoglan.

[Tony Ramone]

Fuckin hell, that sounds brilliant! How long did it take to program that? (yes I'm a drum programming novice, on the lookout for an electronic drummer)

[brandondrury]

While you can't argue with free, I'm not overly impressed by the sound. They may appear to sound okay now, but in a mix these drums are going to sound dull in a hurry.

The machine programming doesn't really help. Take a listen to that first double bass kick drum part in the first second. It's a dead give away that these all used the same velocity. Hopefully the real program has multiple samples and this was just robotic programming.

Brandon

[Money Shot]

you can adjust the volumes of any beat with ease. If that's what you mean. And yea, it does sound pretty dull in a mix. Cool tho for free. Let's you figure out how programs like this might work.

[uab9253]

I'm with Brandon on this, I really don't like the sound even though it is free. Forget about velocities, the sounds themselves are dull. Free is good though.

[Tony Ramone]

Hi all, I just downloaded this yesterday to give it a whirl, and while it might not be to everyone's tastes, I have to say I like it. I just need it to record demos for my punk band - when we do a proper album, we'll just go to a studio where we can actually record our drummer, but for now this is just fine.
To answer your concerns Brandon, you can change the velocities of each note that's played - it's one of the first things mentioned in the tutorial to give more of a groove to the high hats - every 4th one is hit harder. Same goes for fills, which I never thought I'd be able to program without a hell of a lot of time invested in just learning a drum program.
While the sounds themselves might not be great, I think it's possible to get your own samples from elsewhere and load your own kit into it. There's also a mixer, so you can pan the drums as you wish. I have to look at it again later to see if there's any EQ or anything on it.
That's just my quick review after only having spent about an hour on it yesterday (having a sick child seriously curtails the amount of time I can spend on this, so once he's better I'm sure the songs'll be flying out).
Hope this helps.

ANT

[brandondrury]

While the sounds themselves might not be great, I think it's possible to get your own samples from elsewhere and load your own kit into it.

Can you confirm this? If so, this is a very useful tool. If not, the sounds wouldn't cut it in this day and age for the kind of music I do.

[Money Shot]

I'm actually not aware of this tho it could be possible. But the drum kit I used on that sample is the default kit. It is possible to download other kits for hip hop or rock drums or whatever. But with windows, it's a little more difficult than with linux. Here's a link that explains how to do this in windows. It is possible that some other kits might sound better than this one.

Hydrogen Forum > Hydrogen on Windows > drumkit install - workaround

[Money Shot]

Originally Posted by Tony Ramone

Fuckin hell, that sounds brilliant! How long did it take to program that?

I programmed a little more than that actually. About 2 and 1/2 mins of the original song, without judgement. I tried to duplicate it as much as possible which wasn't 100% accurate sometimes. But the 2 and a 1/2 mins took like 5 hours maybe hahaha. Gene Hoglan kicks ass.