Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

by ferrantim • 9 years ago

319 127 9 years ago

dsr_• 9 years ago

I used Hydrogen a few years ago to build a tutorial of [doumbek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblet_drum) patterns. It was too difficult to get it to sound like a human was drumming, but for teaching the basic patterns and getting the timing exactly right, it was pretty good.

camtarn• 9 years ago

Beta versions work on Windows too, although they're a little buggy.

This has pretty much been the standard-issue software for composing and distributing drum patterns for Edinburgh's Beltane Fire Society drum crews for years - amused to see it crop up here :)

andresgottlieb• 9 years ago

Works perfectly in macOS Sierra

_joel• 9 years ago

If you like this, then take a look at https://www.dyne.org/software/dynebolic/ (probably a bit old now) or the Ubuntu Studio distro https://ubuntustudio.org/ that have a lot of Linux based DAW and multimedia creation applications.

toFret• 9 years ago

Been using this for a couple of years, synchronized with Ardour DAW through the JACK sound server.

Works great.

dyeje• 9 years ago

I've checked out Hydrogen a few times, but have been turned off by clunkiness in the UI each time. I'd rather use an web based one for quick one offs or just boot up my DAW for something more in depth.

That said, it's a nice little tool if you're not willing to shell out for a DAW.

yellowapple• 9 years ago

The typical workflow for Hydrogen is to turn a whole desktop session into your DAW, building it from the ground up with your own selection of tools.

I've dreamed of doing something like that for awhile, but at the end of the day it's almost always easier to just reach for a self-contained DAW.

badosu3• 9 years ago

That's the idea of Non: http://non.tuxfamily.org/wiki/index.php?page=Non%20DAW

Separating each part of the composition process with specific applications.

betaby2• 9 years ago

Only I hear cracking sound at the end of every beat? Removing pulseaudio helps to shorten it but not completely eliminates.

hashkb• 9 years ago

Pulse/alsa/jack shenanigans make audio production the only thing I still use MacOS for.

12bits• 9 years ago

^ This.

digi_owl2• 9 years ago

Pulseaudio should not even be involved, as the program do not require it. But then it keeps inserting itself into the "conversation" by hijacking any connection to and from Alsa...

obombration• 9 years ago

Do you use an audio interface? What have you found is supported well by Linux? Saffire Pro 24 + Addictive Drums + Logic is what is really keeping me tied to macOS at home.

digi_owl2• 9 years ago

Define "removing". Pulseaudio is a hard beast to put down.

betaby2• 9 years ago

apt remove pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils then reboot, not really that hard.

rzzzt• 9 years ago

Tame the beast with Cadence: http://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org/Applications:Cadence

This control panel app includes support for a PulseAudio-to-JACK bridge, which makes (if I remember correctly) PulseAudio a wireable source and sink in the connection graph while the server is running.

donquichotte• 9 years ago

I have tried Hydrogen some time ago when I tried to build a linux audio workstation with Jack and Ardour.

As much as it pains me to say this, don't expect it to be even remotely as good as commercial software drum machines like EZDrummer, Superior Drummer or Studio Drummer in terms of sample quality or usability.

Generally, I found it prohibitively complicated to set up a well-working low-latency audio workstation, even though I had one of the few soundcards that had drivers for Linux (Edirol FA-101).

EDIT: That was like 5 years ago, maybe the audio landscape has changed until then. 2017, year of the Linux Audio Workstation!

2nd EDIT: Today I use Reaper on Windows. Reaper is amazing and the only reason I have Windows installed on my private computers. It is to audio editing and recording what Sublime Text is to text editing: slick, fast, inexpensive, easy to install, easy to use.

zevv• 9 years ago

For me a huge change the past years was the coming of Bitwig Studio audio workstation to Linux. Commercial software, but rock solid and high quality.

flavor82• 9 years ago

Do you have to jump through Jack shenanigans to get it working? Or does it just work, nicely?

sowbug2• 9 years ago

Slightly off-topic, but does Bitwig have a restrictive licensing scheme that makes reinstallation cumbersome? I love FL Studio because it doesn't have a limit on number of installations. As a geek, I change my main machine often, and it's so convenient to install FL Studio if I get an itch to bang something out, and not to worry about how many activations I've used up.

Ableton is a turn-off for this reason. They're actually pretty cool about adding activations if you let them know you're moving machines, but it offends me to ask permission to use something I've already paid for.

If Bitwig (1) works well on Linux, (2) works well as a DAW, and (3) doesn't dick around with activation rules, then I'd be delighted both to support them and to switch my (current) hobby workstation from Windows to Linux.

dmix• 9 years ago

I haven't used Hydrogen yet but it seems to be much more than just a drum synth/simulator, such as the ones you referenced as comparison (Studio Drummer, EZDrummer, etc).

Drum machines can mix and compose a variety to samples and synth sounds, these samples can be drum kit sounds but it's not necessary. So you likely only sampled a limited portion of the functionality.

You could also always purchase high quality drum samples and use it with this OSS programs if the built in library sucks. From experience, you could accomplish quite a bit with relatively simple drum machines.

The synth products on the other hand were the thing that was complex and needs to be high quality. Which is likely what you were looking for a drum simulation.

baldfat8• 9 years ago

EZDrummer, and the other examples are a different beast. Those are sample based drum plugins. They are made to sound like real acoustic drums. They are great and wonderful.

This is a pastern based drum machine for non-acoustic sounding drums (Usually). So you are comparing two different tools.

squarefoot2• 9 years ago

EZDrummer actually is a pattern+sample based drum machine like Hydrogen, while Studio Drummer uses pre-recorded audio patterns which could be wonderful to listen to but are very limiting in my opinion, even if played by world class drummers.

This is a pastern based drum machine for non-acoustic sounding drums (Usually).

The only difference is the set of samples used. Hydrogens sample section, like soft-ROMplers such as NI Battery, has a multi layering method of arranging samples for each instruments according to the played velocity. Actually it offers even more layers than Battery so with the right set of samples it could even sound more realistic.

The only problem is the lack of free real sounding acoustic drum samples as most people don't want to use them in favor of distorted sounds with ton of effects. This is so wrong; a decent sound engineer can get the "industrial" sound out of a jazz acoustic set, but no mixing console god in the world can do the other way around. Never ever ever ever sample drums with effects, always record the samples dry and add effects afterwards when needed.

diminish6• 9 years ago

> ..only reason I have Windows installed on my private computer

When you say Reaper, you lose me. I have used it for a long time and it's really the most basic of all the DAW alternatives.

cdawzrd• 9 years ago

Having used both REAPER and Pro Tools professionally, my opinion is that REAPER is not basic at all -- it has every feature I have needed in a DAW, it's easy to use (for me, at least) and performs better than Pro Tools, at a far lower cost. It is one of my favorite pieces of commercial software.

pierrec• 9 years ago

REAPER's feature set is huge, it's also one of the most customizable DAWs I've used. I know this kind of thing is pretty subjective, but even then, there is no way I could possibly call it "basic" compared to the most popular DAWs out there.

squeaky-clean9• 9 years ago

I have used it for a long time and it's really the most basic of all the DAW alternatives.

You clearly haven't. The only possible way there's a shred of truth to this sentence is if you're referring to the included sample-sets/virtual instruments compared to other DAWs, which Reaper doesn't include many of.

RileyKyeden• 9 years ago

It comes with hundreds of effects, supports scripting, and has a huge library of user add-ons: http://stash.reaper.fm/

You must have a different definition of basic. I've never felt limited by Reaper.

Pxtl• 9 years ago

After hearing some oldschool electronica my 9-year old asked me about drum machines. Is there a good kid-friendly one you can recommend for win or android?

squeaky-clean9• 9 years ago

How about one in the browser? There are a lot out there, this is just the first one that came up in Google.

http://www.html5drummachine.com/

thom_nic• 9 years ago

I played with this one a bit and enjoyed it, as a novice: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mikrosonic... I also got G-Stomper during an Amazon sale although I haven't really played with it at all.

If you search the app store for "808" you'll find a lot of apps. The benefit is the original "real" 808 was relatively simple to use.

tofflos• 9 years ago

Try Figure (originally by Propellerhead). It's not strictly a drum machine but it's fun to explore both from a musical and an user-interface aspect. Available for iOS and Windows.

bane• 9 years ago

Caustic is great, a full DAW, cheap iOS, Android, windows (free), macos(free).

djaychela• 9 years ago

This is a browser-based drum machine with two TB-303-like units:

http://errozero.co.uk/acid-machine/

Complete with HN discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13004621

redacted• 9 years ago

Check out the Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators [0], so much fun to play with. I enjoy messing around with chiptunes on my PO-20 Arcade far more than I ever did in software.

The PO-12 [1] and PO-32 [2] (if you can find one) are the two drum machines in that line up.

[0] https://teenage.engineering/products/po

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzEvGGINE20 (this guy has videos for most of the PO series)

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMk8x9fsUQE

gtani• 9 years ago

cheap hardware (you'll probably want velocity sensitive pads) Teenage Eng Rhythm, Korg KR mini and Volca Beats, the Alesis sr 16/18, Akai makes seemingly dozens of beat makers/sequencer/samplers, others from Arturia, boss, the Roland tr09 recreation, etc.

Also DAW builtins: Ableton live DM's, garage band/Logic Pro drummers, I'm pretty sure FL studio, cubase, bitwig, reaper all have something similar

shermanyo2• 9 years ago

Adding to the suggestions here, there's another benefit to playing with hardware.

If they start plugging in basic effects pedals, they'll learn about signal flow and signal chains that are relevant to all styles.

There's no fundamental difference between a microphone, a guitar or a drum machine plugging in to a delay pedal. Learning the basics of EQ (bass, mid, low) gets them on the path to studio mastering if they're interested in that side later. If they decide they don't like the creative side, they have the basics to learn live sound tech or sound engineering.

Good luck and have fun :)

n00b101• 9 years ago

I found it prohibitively complicated to set up a well-working low-latency audio workstation, even though I had one of the few soundcards that had drivers for Linux (Edirol FA-101).

I don't know anything about your area, but it sounds like a pre-built Linux image with realtime kernel and maybe some custom driver setup would be useful here. I use LinuxCNC [1] and they provide a super-convenient Linux image that take only a few minutes to get setup and controlling real CNC machines / robots.

[1] http://linuxcnc.org/

ghostly_s• 9 years ago

There are a number of these targeted at Linux audio production: http://linux-sound.org/distro.html

AstralStorm2• 9 years ago

In fact, any modern PREEMPT enabled Linux can do realtime audio if you enable threadirqs=1 option, as I found out.

trickell• 9 years ago

Check out LMMS (Let's Make Music). It's like Ableton for Linux and already has VST's like Hydrogen, etc. built into the software itself: https://lmms.io/

badosu3• 9 years ago

LMMS is great for easy EDM composition, but lacks a lot of things essential for a serious workflow.

I'd recommend Ardour for more studio-oriented work: http://ardour.org/

Also, Ardour works with Alsa as backend.

jameskegel• 9 years ago

It's actually like FL Studio for Linux as it is pretty much a carbon copy. If you want to draw a direct comparison of "Ableton for Linux" then the logical choice is Bitwig, which is quite frankly "Ableton for Linux" since all of the original Ableton developers left to start Bitwig and the interface is a 100% copy of the original.

davidgerard3• 9 years ago

Do you know anything on the story of Bitwig vs Ableton? (Google gives me lots of feature comparisons, but not the story.)

edit: http://djtechtools.com/2012/01/12/bitwig-studio-announced-ab...

andai• 9 years ago

Ahh, when I last tried it, it was called Linux MultiMedia Studio :)

Tenoke• 9 years ago

I like LMMS but the funny thing about it is that some of the essential features (such as extrrnal VSTs) don't work on Linux (unless you set it up on wine, which has it's own issues).

davidgerard3• 9 years ago

I used LMMS for Windows in Wine for ages. Now using on Ubuntu 16.04 compiled from source linking to libwine. Works fine, I'm not at all clear on what bit of Linux use is supposed to be hard.

kruhft2• 9 years ago

Here's an album I made exclusively with LMMS and it's default setup of sounds and plugins:

https://kruhft.bandcamp.com/album/listener

It's a pretty good piece of software.

davidgerard3• 9 years ago

I'm a happy LMMS user of many years, but "It's like Ableton" is somewhere between wrong and not-even-wrong. It doesn't have anything like the feature set nor the basic paradigm of Ableton, and anyone trying LMMS on this basis will be seriously disappointed.

The actual comparison is FL Studio - because LMMS started as a cheap-and-cheerful open source clone of FruityLoops, to the point where many FL Studio how-tos (particularly for the 3x Oscillator, sorry Triple Oscillator) also work for LMMS.

LMMS also imports pretty well from Hydrogen, apparently.

LMMS plus points: it costs $0, and it's open source! Minus point: it has only volunteer developers, who come and go; there's no support organisation.

LMMS is very easy to get started on and it's lots of fun. The Woolworths guitar of disco; cheap, cheerful, inadequate and readily available.

[The Woolworths guitar was cheap and helped punk rock along greatly; Pete Shelley from the Buzzcocks had one that he'd basically beaten to a plank.]

xatan_dank2• 9 years ago

The interface reminds me a lot of FL Studio (which I currently use on Ubuntu via Wine, works great). Hydrogen looks interesting, but I think most DAWs simply have almost all of these features and far more. That being said, this looks to be FOSS, which I really admire. I'll have to check this out after work.

k-mcgrady2• 9 years ago

Most DAWS might have drum machines but most serious users end up using a third party product. The built-in ones are undeniably good but thinks like Kontact/EZDrummer etc. are on another level.

peapicker• 9 years ago

Never used Kontact or EZ Drummer, but seems like it would be hard to beat Ableton Live Suite's combo of drumracks and stacking effects per drum sample... Do you have experience with both? Any reason I should look into the former when I've invested in the latter?

edit: Nevermind, after looking at Native's offering (Kontact), I can see it has a lot of advantages for a certain kind of music, but that isn't the music I'm writing...

shams93• 9 years ago

It's great on the pi3 runs well in arm. It's nice this isn't abandonware a lot of the open source projects for Linux audio became abandonware.

fundamental3• 9 years ago

Yeah, the number of single developer projects combined with developer attrition has certainly orphaned a ton of linux-audio projects.

flavor82• 9 years ago

It would be nice if Ubuntu pruned dead / barely working products from their repos. There's an astonishing number of frustratingly bad audio apps in their main repo.

jerf2• 9 years ago

Do you happen to have a good reference on using the Pi3 for audio? I spent a lot of Saturday trying to make mine do some stuff, and while a lot of the technical snafus were the usual sort, I did end up burning a lot of time googling around until I finally found someone who suggested turning off CPU performance scaling. Which was a forehead slap moment for me after that, but, still, it'd be nice if there was somewhere I could go that had that stuff more laid out.

(As implied, I've googled already. A lot.)

(The Pi3 seems to have more than enough CPU power for it to do what I want but I was having trouble just routing audio in a USB mic straight out to the speakers without dropouts and failures two or three times a second, even though the CPU is barely at 10%. I think turning off the scaling seemed to fix that, though I ran out of time just as I tried that to be sure.)

fundamental3• 9 years ago

You may want to check out some of the posts at https://autostatic.com/ and the forums for zynthian https://discourse.zynthian.org/ . If memory serves both sites focused on some of the version 2 revisions of the Pi, but they may also help with your board as well.

spednar• 9 years ago

why is this on HN? Hydrogen has been around for ages no?

bump for Tidal if you're looking for interesting ways to arrange sample playback: https://tidalcycles.org/

unicornporn• 9 years ago

For full av more fully featured Linux sequencer I'd recommend Renoise. It's a tracker (and is not floss), but is super impressive.

blockoperation• 9 years ago

Renoise is great, especially for breakbeat/jungle drum programming. Just load up your break of choice, put in some slice markers (or play it with offset commands like on old trackers), and you're set.

I do find the pattern-based workflow a bit of a productivity killer though (I usually get stuck on perfecting the same 8/16 bar loop).

kruhft2• 9 years ago

Here's an example of an album I made with ReNoise and it's default sounds/plugin set:

http://kruhft.bandcamp.com/album/macro-2

All of it is mixed, played and recorded'live' with the pre-programmed tracks being mixed using an offboard midi controller.

pmoriarty• 9 years ago

Just to add a bit to this:

Renoise is really rock solid, fast, light-weight, powerful, Lua-scriptable, and really cheap compared to your typical commercial DAW, like Bitwig. I think I paid less than $80 for Renoise, compared to about $400 for Bitwig.

The tracker paradigm is very different to the piano-roll paradigm that most other DAWs use. If you can get used to the tracker way of doing things, which is very keyboard-centric (kind of like vim and emacs), then you could be very productive, if not you might be better off with a traditional DAW.

Finally, trackers are usually used for making electronic music, and might not be the best fit for other types of music, or for making or editing long recordings. You might be better off with something like Ardour or Bitwig for that.

mrcactu5• 9 years ago

everyone on Instagram puts music tracks to their videos. they could be ironing their clothes but they will attack a hip-hop track our country music tune and get 10000 views quickly

stevehiehn3• 9 years ago

Does anyone know if it Hydrogen can be controlled via api/commandline? I would like to try generating patterns with machine learning.

zhengyi13• 9 years ago

It's not precisely your desire/use-case, but that sounds vaguely like you might like some of the programmatic sound generation systems out there:

Overtone - http://overtone.github.io/ Tidal - https://tidalcycles.org/

Perhaps those might be hooked into something you're already building?

stevehiehn3• 9 years ago

Thanks! I'm aware of super collider and it is cool. However i'm not interested in real-time. I have been generating midi patterns and rendering audio server-side over many hours. I've started hand rolling a system to play drum samples from generated patterns. It would be nice if i could find something already built.

sampo• 9 years ago

All kinds of sound-generating software you can control using midi, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI

stevehiehn3• 9 years ago

Agreed. The hard part for me is finding software that runs serverside on linux. I have been using https://github.com/teragonaudio/MrsWatson which is really good

3131s• 9 years ago

I've made a bunch of stuff with Hydrogen. I really like it and it's more stable (as in, does not crash all the time) than it used to be. It has its limitations, but in general I am easily able to create the sounds I want with it.

phatbyte• 9 years ago

Good stuff here, and nice to see an OSS GUI application with a good UI/UX for a change.

gntech• 9 years ago

I have heard a lot of good stuff about DrumGizmo[0] lately, it has a very active development as well. Havent had the oppurtunity to try it out yet. But I have recently heard people moving from Hydrogen to DrumGizmo.

[0] http://www.drumgizmo.org/wiki/

badosu3• 9 years ago

For anyone interested in checking the state of Linux and Free/OS software for music making I strongly recommend checking out: http://libremusicproduction.com/

There have been great improvements on the latest years in regard to plugin availability and support for professional workflows/devices that might be overlooked.

ndh2• 9 years ago

Landing page == news feed -> nope

catwell• 9 years ago

This brings me way back. I used to play drums, and I used Hydrogen to help with drums patterns practice. I translated the manual and tutorial in French back in 2004, and 13 years later my name is still there in the changelog :)

Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

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