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Sunday, April 30, 2006

Using Hydrogen (I: Getting Started)

Using Hydrogen (I: Getting Started)

Back in the 60’s and 70’s, electronic instruments began to appear alongside the more traditional acoustic guitars and pianos. The synthesizer captivated a generation with strange bleeps and warbles.

Growing up alongside them, more quietly, but still surely was the drum machine. This mechnical rhythmic device could play accompaniment for another guitarist when a drummer wasn’t available, and it didn’t do drugs!

The first were very mechanical and robotic sounding. As the years have progressed, however, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between the real drummer and the drum machine, unless that it is the goal.

Hydrogen, is an open-source program designed to open up the possibilities of a drum machine to the computer musician. This highly impressive piece of freely available software can load sampled drum recordings and allow the user to create patterns, and in turn creates songs from these patterns.

Let’s get started:
  • Double click on the Hydrogen icon on your desktop.

  • Read the features list and then click OK to get started.

  • Two windows open up: The main program window, and the mixer window. You may click between these or use alt-tab to change between them.

  • Go to the Main window.

  • In the middle of the screen, there is a list of drum instrument samples, such as “Crash Jazz,” “Ride Rock,” “Kick,” “Stick,” etc. Click on one of these sample names and you will hear what it sounds like.

Next lesson will help us be familiarized with the layout of the program.

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