Hydrogen Drum Software

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Drum Machine (Sampler, Arranger)
Platform: Mac, PC, Linux
Format: Standalone (exports audio & MIDI)
Price: FREE!

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For BFD 1.5 users who wish for a better way to create drum beats or for BFD 2 users who don't use the new sequencer. This actually should work with any MIDI-capable drum software such as BFD, Superior Drummer, DrumCore, Addictive Drums, to name just a few.

Yesterday I fell into my "once-every-six-months Linux kick" and was screwing around with LMMS (dang impressive once you figure it out) and Hydrogen. I never really gave Hydrogen much time in the past but assumed it was one of the better free drum programs available due to it being included with every Linux studio distro. So now that I am really looking for a better way to lay out drums for a typical song structure, I decided to give it another try.


The Hydrogen interface



WOW! I am impressed with this program! I figured the whole thing out in 5-10 minutes and it does EXACTLY what I was hoping to find in other programs.

Here's a quick walk-through:

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Click "Mode" to toggle Pattern Mode or Song Mode. Pattern Mode will repeat the measure that you're constructing in the Pattern Editor, Song Mode will play the entire song as laid out in the Song Editor.



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Lay out your song structure in the Song Editor. Click on the first unused track/pattern on the left, name it, and start creating a beat for that pattern (verse 1, for example) below. You can create up to 32 tracks/patterns.



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The Pattern Editor is where you create and edit your drum beats. It works like any other piano roll editor, including Reaper's. Use your MIDI keyboard, click away with your mouse or use your QWERTY keyboard (according to the manual, anyway). Notice velocity handles are visible depending on which instrument you have selected. This saves confusion of which instrument's velocity you're editing!



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Supports divisions up to 32nd notes, and triplets as well. "Size" sets the number of quarter notes in the pattern (the length of the pattern, such as 16, 32, etc.) Resolution defines the timing (8th note triplets, for example.) Triplets are in the lower half of the drop-down and are noted with a T.



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Now go back to the song editor and draw in which bars you want each pattern/track to play in. One feature I could not find was markers, which would be very helpful.



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Once you have a few patterns going with multiple instruments in each, you'll definitely want one of these: a Mixer!



The Linux version comes complete with LAPSDA effects but the Windows version does not. I'm not sure about the Mac version. Since I plan on just exporting the MIDI and working with BFD inside of Reaper, effects are not an issue with me since Reaper includes more than 100!

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Don't like the included drum sounds? Go to the Instrument Rack and import WAV, AIFF, or FLAC samples to assemble your own kit. You haves 16 layers available per instrument (sample).



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There is a page full of pre-assembled Hydrogen-format drum kits here, but you can directly download those kits from within the program! Here we see the strength of Hydrogen's Linux roots in action.



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In addition to importing and layering samples, the Instrument Rack also gives you an ADSR envelope, gain, mute group, cutoff, resonance, and a really cool Random Pitch knob. I tried this on a rhythm that used a low tom on 16th notes to carry the groove and the random pitch really made a huge difference in humanizing the sound. Solo'd, it sounded a bit extreme, but thrown into the mix it came across as lively and realistic. And speaking of randomizing, if you right-click on the instrument name in the Pattern Editor (not the Instrument Rack) you can choose Randomize Velocity, as well as Mute, Lock, Solo, Clear Notes, Fill Notes, and Delete.



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And this is where we tie all this into your DAW - EXPORT TO MIDI! Create the beats and overall song structure for your whole song and export the MIDI information to your DAW, then trigger the MIDI track with BFD, Superior Drummer, DrumCore, Addictive Drums, or any of the myriad drum samplers out there.



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Of course if you like the kits available in Hydrogen, or you choose to import your own favorite samples, you can just export the audio directly as a stereo file. Exporting multi-track files is a bit more work, however. You would have to solo each track and export them one by one to be able to further mix and process within Reaper (which I highly recommend!) or your favorite DAW. You would also want to be as sure as possible that your tempo is the one you want your finished song to be played at. This is one reason why this software seems to be a better companion to programs like BFD, which is why I originally posted.

The major feature I would recommend for Hydrogen would be Rewire support. From what I understand about Rewire, though, you may have to pay a license fee to integrate it into your software so I'm not sure this would be possible. Also, Hydrogen is truly free, as in open source, so including proprietary elements could pose a problem on that side as well.

So how about ASIO? If Hydrogen supported ASIO we could use Reaper's ReaRoute ASIO driver to accomplish a Rewire-like communication between programs (minus sync).

Probably the best solution to accomplish this kind of integration right now would be to install JACK. JACK is an audio server that allows routing of audio from any part of your computer to any other part. The big benefit with JACK is that it has a PC versopn, Mac version, Linux version and others, and that it provides accurate synchronization between programs. This means you could lay out the patterns and overall song structure within Hydrogen and receive that audio stream within your DAW to create other parts of your song around. When you pressed stop on JACK, all audio streams would stop. And you wouldn't have to keep exporting files whenever you wanted to change something. Then when you are done, you just export MIDI and bring in the big boys such as BFD to play your real samples!

I hope this will become a part of some of our reader's workflow. I anticipate it being a big part of mine from here on out!

FREE!
Windows, Mac, Linux

MRT University: What is a VST plug-in?

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Music and Recording Toolbox Special: What is a VST Plug-in?
Level: All skill levels
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My goal is to make this blog a place that people with any level of experience can get excited about. The last thing I would want to hear from someone is "Well this is all fine and nice, but what the heck is a VST anyway?" It is for that reason that I have written this post today!

VST is an abbreviation for Virtual Studio Technology. It was invented by the German pro audio company Steinberg, most famous for their Cubase line of recording software. A plug-in is software that plugs in to another piece of software, thus extending the other's functionality. Steinberg's idea was that they didn't need to spend all their resources attempting (and most likely failing) to make Cubase all things to all people. They could instead sell a core product that could then be shaped into anything the customer needed through the use of plug-ins. If you own a vocal production room, you may only want a few specific kinds of processing available. But if you record and mix rock bands, you will probably need a wide palette of tools available to you at the push of a button. It surely wouldn't make sense for any company to design countless versions of their software hoping to cater to every possible client. So they addressed the monumental problem of meeting every client's needs by simply creating a standard that any software developer could freely write plug-ins for, and any customer could easily find those plug-ins by looking for the VST logo.

I don't think Steinberg knew what "VST" would come to mean in the world of computer-based recording when they imagined it. It has grown from an attempt to create a standard that people would gravitate to, to the most popular studio plug-in format in the world, and that by far. Probably the single most important contribution to VST's current dominance came from a man by the name of Jeff McClintock. In 1999, Jeff released a software package titled "SynthEdit", and it went on to change the entire landscape of computer recording dramatically. You see, the most help that Steinberg offered developers for writing VST's was their SDK, which is a Software Development Kit. It is useful because it provides an environment in which to write the plug-in. It provides organization, code shortcuts, and more.

But SynthEdit was much more than this: it was an entire graphical development environment like Dreamweaver or Photoshop. Before, developers would try to create a digital copy of an oscillator for a synth, for example, by typing lines of code that were approximations of an analog oscillator. Then they would have to write the code that would connect that oscillator to a filter, which was also coded line by line. And after you went through the entire process of creating a synth, you then had to use a separate layout program to create the GUI (Graphical User Interface) that the user would see to make those oscillators and filters work! This was a prohibitively overwhelming process for anyone with the exception of those with extraordinary patience and programming skills. Unfortunately, that ruled out nearly every creative person with a good idea for a VST!

The appeal of SynthEdit was that it turned that nightmarish process into a point, click, and drag operation. To work with an oscillator, you simply had to select one of the pre-coded oscillator modules (which are graphically represented) and connect it to a similar filter module. This took no programming knowledge; only a click, drag, and VOILA - instant signal path! Not only that, but SynthEdit had an entire graphic layout workspace that conformed to the VST standard built right in. Now anyone with $50 and a little curiosity could create their own synth, EQ, reverb, or any other VST they could imagine from start to finish - all with one simple and intuitive tool. And just as importantly, it could all be done with a fraction of the skill and time it would take to work with Steinberg's SDK.

It didn't take long before VST's were being created and offered for free by the hundreds via the web. This phenomenon not only popularized Steinberg's VST plug-in standard, but their recording software as well. Now anyone could buy Steinberg's Cubase and also get any number of add-on plug-ins to customize their virtual studio for free!  Later, other DAW developers began supporting the VST standard as well as the then-ubiquitous DX standard from Microsoft.  Currently, most PC DAW dev's support VST only.

You might be thinking "If it's so easy for someone to make a VST, aren't there just a bunch of amateurs releasing nothing but crapware out there?" This is a valid question, and that conclusion is partly true. Creating a high-quality plug-in, especially an emulation of a high-quality hardware synth or audio processor, is usually no simple feat, though this depends on the complexity of the gear attempting to be emulated. Just because it is easy to connect an oscillator to a filter in SynthEdit does not mean it will automatically sound musical! (Can you imagine connecting random traces together on a circuit board and expecting pleasing results?) There is a reason certain pieces of hardware sound as good as they do, and much of that is the result of a well-conceived signal path and architecture, which is in turn the result of enormous hours of research and development!

The best sounding components on an analog hardware audio processor, or 'outboard gear', as studio lingo goes, may be extremely complex and full of many smaller components, but the modules included for free in SynthEdit are not as likely to include something that exotic. Thus emulating exotic gear could require a high degree of skill because one may have to code the component themselves. There would also be the possibility that another programmer had created that particular module and had it for sale. As I said earlier, much of this scenario depends on the original design that is attempting to be emulated. There are some pieces of outboard gear that function well that also have an unusally simple but clever design, even manufactured with common, inexpensive parts. Things like these are common in the world of free VST's. In fact, one can find the same classic piece of gear independently developed by several different people, and the only tangible difference is in the way they laid out the GUI! I guess if I had to pick something to complain about, I'd gladly have it be that I had too many choices of free stuff and I needed to choose the best one for me. :-)

It should be also noted that more and more VST developers that cut their teeth with SynthEdit are becoming serious programmers and learning how to code their own oscillators or other "modules". This makes their VST's sound more unique because they no longer solely rely on the pre-assembled code within SynthEdit. There are also developers who code the entire audio portion of their VST with the Steinberg SDK or even the C++ programming language, then use SynthEdit only for it's easy graphical layout capabilities. I am grateful that SynthEdit hasn't solely become a tool to create a world of prefabricated add-ons, but has instead offered interested developers an unintimidating and welcoming environment to begin and grow their talent. This hand-held first step has grown beginners into talented developers releasing some of the most unique and high-quality software we have available today!

So in review:

VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology.
VST is a plug-in format (the most popular one!)
VST plug-ins extend another software's functionality.
VST's are where they are today largely because of SynthEdit.
VST's are what we discover and present to you through VST Discovery!

MRT University: Reaper walk-through - Audio Interface & VST Folder setup

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Subject: Reaper
Topic: Audio Interface & VST Folder setup.
Level: Beginner
Format: HTML/Images
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MRT University (Music & Recording Toolbox University) is a collection of tutorials and other instruction with features for beginners and pro's alike.

Here is a 13-step Reaper walk-through showing how to set up your preferred audio interface and VST folders step by step. This is a simple tutorial for beginners.

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MRT University: Creative Configurations

MRT University, Music & Recording Toolbox University is a collection of tutorials and other instruction and will have features for beginners and pro's alike.

A wonderfully complex post will be arriving soon about using multiple programs, multiple computers, and even multiple operating systems at once to maximize processing power and your palette of tools. We will be discussing the "former-commercial-app-gone-open-source" application sensation Plasq Wormhole, among other tools and ideas.

I provided the link to Wormhole just in case you want to jump in with both feet and no help! ;-)