Alternatives to Hydrogen?

[Luc]

You know what, I'm afraid I can't say that I really like Hydrogen. Are there alternatives to it? Windows plugins are just as welcome as long as they run on Carla.

Thanks in advance.

[glowrak guy]

Depends on your needs, for basic playing of drum sounds and sampled loops,
drumgizmo
drumkv1
samplev1
using a few insances of samplev1, with custom sampled loops, could be interesting

Some sequencers like rosegarden and muse might also be useful,
as there are soundfont drumkits on the net.

Did you use hydrogen to define velocity for each hit, and create patterns for intro, body, chorus, transition, and conclusion?
and put them on a grid to creat a complete rythm track?
Have you made a new kit by loading a kit, then importing different samples one by one,
and export it with a new name?
How abpout exporting the midi files for future use?
The hydrogen mixer lets you apply three effects to each instrument, and control level and panning.

There's a lot to like. And not just for drums.

A couple years back, ezdrummer, drum-corps, and addictive drums all worked with wine.
But I can't vouch for their current installers, which may be a problem. Battery 4 from Native Instruments has a demo
that lasts 30 minutes before needing a restart. Drumburst from HG Fortune is a lot of fun and useful, but he died,
and his website has lapsed, but it was a freebie, so may be it's out there somewhere still.

Kontakt Elements ($30) has a very nice Abbey Roads kit, a good intro to other kontakt based libraries.
A bargain with the GR% and Reaktor content. Put this in google:

reaktor drums "user library" Quite a few freebies, if you buy Elements, you can then use
all the massive user library in 30 minute sessions. It's own content has no restriction. Steampipe is awesome.

The NI Kore free soundpack, and bonus pack had some nice kits in them. No idea about availability.
Cheers

[Luc]

I have tried all that. I know that Hydrogen has a lot going for it, but usability is not quite included.

Adding and changing things is very tedious. The pattern editor is not very nice. Those floating balls all look the same except when they're 100% velocity. There could be vertical lines marking 1 2 3 4 so I wouldn't have to keep looking up where the numbers are all the time. I can't have separate drumkits for different patterns, it's all or nothing. Each piece's volume is controlled on the mixer and on the far left, but pan and pitch are controlled on the instrument pane, on the far right. I keep moving the mouse pointer all the way across the screen over and over and over... So far I haven't found a single spot where the mouse right button will serve any purpose. The scroll wheel only seems to serve to control velocity, but only if the mouse pointer is on the velocity panel. Why not on the notes themselves? And I can't seem to turn quantization off. I turn it off according to the manual, but the notes still stick to the grid.

Anyway, I could go on all day. And some of these things have been requested before, years ago (I saw them on the Hydrogen forum through Google searches), but have never been implemented.

I understand the project is understaffed and they owe me nothing, but perhaps there are other options. I've been trying to put a couple of projects together and I'm finding it's painful.

Thank you.

[lazyklimm]

IMO the best drum editor for linux is in Muse.

[sysrqer]

Redux if you don't have a open source requirement.

[glowrak guy]

A couple other things, from the peanut gallery, an old cheap yamaha DGX keyboard
lets you load two drumkits as the layered sounds, (likely other brands also)
and then offset them by one or two octaves, so each beat plays two percussion instruments.
Makes for some interesting finger drumming, and nice to send it some midi patterns,
and use substantial delay effects.

Some software maps percussion loops to each key, usually 61 keys,
such as Drumatoxin and E-mu Beat Shop. So just a few fingers, and some
experimentation with timing/syncopation, can yield unique and fun results.
Cheers

[naught101]

Fabla + a DAW, but you might be better off waiting for Fabla 2.

[Luc]

Hmm. I just googled Fabla and... hey, I already have it!

But I get a blank screen instead of the GUI. Does it work for you?

[Luc]

Ah, well, it works on jalv. Not on Carla, though.

Falk, should I file a report on github?

Now let me test the new toy a little before I go to bed.

[DarkMedina]

In order to use Fabla you need to install NTK. Search for help on how to compile it,etc.

[Luc]

In order to use Fabla you need to install NTK. Search for help on how to compile it,etc.

Like I said, it loads correctly from jalv, and I don't have this NTK thing you mentioned. I assume Carla is doing something wrong in that aspect.

There is no need to compile Fabla since it is included in the official repository.

[mauser]

Hi,

even if you're looking for an alternative, i'm trying to answer some questions, maybe it helps other users who have the same problems..

So far I haven't found a single spot where the mouse right button will serve any purpose.

The right mouse button can be used to edit the note length.

The scroll wheel only seems to serve to control velocity, but only if the mouse pointer is on the velocity panel. Why not on the notes themselves?

Good point!

And I can't seem to turn quantization off. I turn it off according to the manual, but the notes still stick to the grid.

The "quant" button controls the quantization of keyboard or midi input. If you want to place note independently of the grid by clicking on them, you have to deactivate the grid (set Resolution ("Res." Combobox) to "off").

As you correctly guessed, Usability is always a bit off under narrow time constraints, but we try to do what we can In general, it helps to create github issues for improvements.

[ssj71]

sounds like most of your complaints are re: sequencing so perhaps you would like seq24. There's a fork I heard of recently called sequencer64. I haven't used the latter, but maybe you'll find it preferable. https://github.com/ahlstromcj/sequencer64

[gimmeapill]

I couldn't get very far with Hydrogen either, mostly because I'm used to trackers.
So the recommendation here is Renoise (or it's little bro Redux - as already mentioned).
Past the initial learning phase, you quickly find yourself flying on the keyboard without even touching the mouse and getting stuff done as fast as you can think about it.
Not for everyone, but but if you're uncomfortable with point and click editors, this is probably worth a shot.

As for open source Linux trackers, they're just not mature or complete enough for daily use.
The more advanced would probably be: https://github.com/Buzztrax

[asbak]

Just use a sequencer of choice and send drum track MIDI out to Hydrogen. Simple.