Hydrogen pattern won't play Ardour hosted Drumgizmo

[gregariousgus]

Hello good people I am having trouble driving the drumgizmo plugin from my Hydrogen song, but not when I manually strike drum sounds from within hydrogen. What have I left undone?

I am using Ubuntu Studio 19.10, which comes with Hydrogen 0.9.7 and Ardour 5.12.0. I followed the instructions listed here

Using Hydrogen to play DrumGizmo's DRS Kit

for installing drumgizmo. Now I can manually test drumgizmo drums by clicking on the piano keys in the drumgizmo pianoroll in Ardour.

In the Hydrogen settings I changed the driver to JACKMidi. In Ardour, I opened the MIDI Connections dialog and connected hydrogen-midi as a source to drumgizmo as a destination.

When I left click with my mouse on the names of the drumgizmo drums in the Hydrogen pattern editor, I hear them play, as well as see all the meters jump in Ardour. But when I play the song in Ardour I hear no drums (not see any meter activity), even though I see the playback start in Hydrogen (the clock starts running, and the cursor starts animating.)


Any ideas?

Thank you
GG

[nils]

Try this:
Top left corner of Ardour is a button labeled "INT" (internal). If you click it it switches to "JACK". Now Ardour participates in jack transport and syncs.

[gregariousgus]

Thanks --but the button is set to "JACK" .

And apparently the two are in communication; when I press play in Ardour I see the playback starts in Hydrogen (the Hydrogen clock starts running, and the Hydrogen pattern and song cursors start animating) but, as I say, no audio and no meter activity in Ardour.

[Bella]

@gregariousgus

In Hydrogen, set the Audio Driver to JACK and the MIDI driver you can leave as ALSA if you have a2jmidid installed. Otherwise leave the MIDI as JACK Then choose to let Hydrogen restart the driver (a little window will pop up asking you). Also, make sure the J.Master button is on in Hydrogen's transport.

So Hydrogen will look like this:

• You have a dummy kit loaded that's mapped to the DrumGizmo kit you have loaded in Ardour

• Hydrogen's audio driver = JACK

• Hydrogen's MIDI driver = ALSA (if you have a2jmidid installed and running, otherwise, leave it as JACK)

• Hydrogen's J. Master is pressed 'On'

And in Ardour:

• Edit/Preferences/Sync = "External Timecode Source: Jack"

• The "input" of the DrumGizmo MIDI channel in Ardour is set to Hydrogen

• Ardour's INT button is set to JACK

• Make sure the "In" button is pressed on the MIDI track via the track's mixer strip, to Monitor Input.

Try that and see.

EDIT: For me, I like to send drum MIDI on ch. 10 exclusively, so I have Hydrogen's MIDI channel set to 10 in Options/Preferences/MIDI System. Likewise, for the DrumGizmo MIDI track in Ardour, I have the Channel Selector forced to channel 10,

This post has been updated to clarify.

[gregariousgus]

Thank you for the detailed answer. Well I tried what you suggested but I am still out of luck. And now, when I left click on drum names in hydrogen pattern editor, I no longer hear the drums being played back, nor see the Ardour drumgizmo meters jump, as was the case before I made the changes. This probably has to do with midi connections: in Ardour I no longer see hydrogen as a possible source in the Ardour MIDI connection manager. The options I now have for sources are:

MTC out, MIDI clock out, or MMC out (all under "sync" tab)

or

MIDI control out or auditioner/mid_out (under the "ardour" tab)

[Bella]

@gregariousgus

Forgot to mention one thing: In Ardour, make sure the "In" button is pressed on the MIDI track's mixer strip, to monitor the input.

Otherwise you probably won't hear any sound.

[Bella]

@gregariousgus

Also, go ahead and switch back to JACK MIDI in Hydrogen. I'm guessing you don't have a2jmidid set up on your system, which allows Ardour to see MIDI thru ALSA

I updated my original response with the additional info. Hopefully this gets you going.

[gregariousgus]

@Bella - you guessed it! The problem was the "In" button wasn't pressed on the MIDI track's mixer strip. Wow.


I'm very grateful, thank you so much! I still have much to learn.

GG

[Bella]

@gregariousgus

Awesome! Glad to be able to help

Have fun!