Using Hydrogen (III: Making a Drum Pattern)

Using Hydrogen (III: Making a Drum Pattern)
In this next installment, we will be making a simple drum pattern in Hydrogen. If you don’t have Hydrogen on your computer yet, or aren’t sure what it is, please look back at previous posts to get going.

For purposes of the tutorial, I will be making a simple 12-bar blues song. It will be simple enough to understand, yet the lessons will be applicable to any style of music you would like to make.

Open Hydrogen from your Desktop (See Getting Started if needed).

• In the main program window, look at the pattern editor area. Look at the column under “1”. This is the first beat of the measure.


• Click on the row and column for “Kick” and “1”. This will put a dot in the area like shown. On the first beat, the kick drum sample will be played.

• Add another beat: this time match the row and column for “Snare Rock” and “2”.

• Add another beat: this time match the row and column for “Snare Rock” and “4”.

• Add another beat: this time match the row and column for “Kick” and “3”. Your pattern should now look like this:


• Press play on the transport control, you should now hear a simple beat. This is the first measure in our song! Good job!