Let There Be Drum Part 2: The Interface

Just like what I have promised you before, I will continue explaining the Hydrogen Interface, Now I'm gonna talk about the pattern editor, drumkits manager, song editor etc.

1.Pattern editor

Fig 1 Pattern Editor

This pattern editor is the “key” of all. This is the window where we must create the pattern. Just click on the part you want to play the sound. Kicks, snares, toms, crash/cymbals, hi-hats, cowbell and many more, depend on the drumkits we use. We can create as many patterns as we can. To work with other pattern, click on the Pattern Name panels above (use the '+' and '-' button)..The lines at the bottom side shows how hard we hit the part.

2.Drumkits Manager
With the drumkits manager, we can select which drumkits we want to use. By default, there's only two drumkits available, GMkit and Roland-808 drumkits, but we can simply import other drumkits.

Fig 2 Drumkits Manager

How to import drumkits?
Click the Import button

Fig 3 Importing Drumkits

Click Browse button, and select it from the directory containing the drumkits. Choose the drumkits we want to import. And then click the Import button.

Fig 4 Browsing the directories containing the drumkits

The drumkits must be in *.h2drumkit format. We can download the drumkits from Hydrogen official website, but it is usually in a compressed format (*.tar.gz, *.tar.bz2, or *.zip), so we've had to extract it before importing it.

3.The Mixer
We can adjust the volume and also the balance of each drumkits part separately with this mixer. Just click the volume control and move it with your mouse.

Fig 5 The Mixer

4.Song editor
After creating all the patterns needed, we'll have to combine all patterns in order to compose the full song. This is what this part used for. Remember, you may play more than one pattern at a time.

Fig 6 Song Editor

After completing it, we are now able to play the pattern. Use the Play button on the bottom panel.

I think it's enough for now. In the next tutorial, I will show you how to save the patterns and export them into other formats