Hydrogen drumkit creator script V5 is here !

YES I KNOW!
It should have been V3, but V3 and V4 sucked big time so i had to put them down ...
amen

Anyway :
here is V5 !

And what does it do that V2 couldn't do ?
It can take an existing drumkit as input and convert it to FLAC and OGG

Why ?
Because that is really cool + it reduces the size of the drumkit drastically.
An example: Gabriel's 'AC guitar strums' drumkit (the one that won the Hydrogen Drumkit contest) is 370MB in it's original form (using WAV samples), 135MB in FLAC format and only 7MB in OGG format !!
Of course the conversion to OGG does have an impact on the sound quality while the FLAC version maintains the same quality as the original.
What format you want to use is you choice, but 1 good reason to use OGG is to save space, both on disk and in RAM when the drumkit is loaded.

The 'Drumbody'

A couple of weeks ago I received Wolke's 'Drumbody' : a DIY midi controller that is -more or less- made especially for Hydrogen :

Denon CRB 90 Rhythm Box for Hydrogen

Hi all
I finally found some time to finish my 'Denon Rhythm Box' Hydrogen drumkit

A Denon Rhythm Box ?
That's right, a Denon Rhythm Box :

Check out this video if you want to see it in action (note that this box has been modded), and I even found a blog dedicated to this device !

As you probably have noticed : the capabilities of the box and the quality of the sounds are not all that fantastic compared to what other boxes can do, but keep in mind that this box dates from ... euh ... way back !

Btw: I actually don't own the Denon box I used to record the sounds from.  A friend just kinda left it at my parents home after one of our rehersals and 'forgot' about it, but now that I have the samples I can give it back to him (he'll be really happy ;-)

Hydrogen drumkit contest closed

Waw!

The drumkit contest was quite a bit of work (a LOT more than expected!), but I'm quite happy with the result !

The drumkit contest chapter is not yet completely closed (I still need to get the prizes to the winners and upload the drumkits), but already I'm thinking about possible future contests : song contest, pattern contest, artwork ...

However, I wonder if we could change the formula?  Would it be possible to create a virtual money-box that people can donate some money to, and once the money-box reaches a certain amount, we launch a contest and the money-box money is used to pay for the prize(s)

Mmm ... wonder if someone has done something like this before ?

Hydrogen drumkit creator script V2

An improved version of the original script is ready.

What's new:
- some small bugfixes
- more options
- espeak sample generator

Hydrogen Espeak Drumkit

What happens when you combine Espeak + Hydrogen + createH2kit_V2.py + 30min of spare time ?
Click the link below and find out :-)


Hydrogen Espeak Drumkit


In a next post i'll explain a bit more how i did this and also post the new python script that creates a drumkit starting from a txt file.
Stay tuned !

Hydrogen GM espeak test kit : the drumkit that can speak

A couple of days ago Emanuel Rumpf (one of the H2 users) pointed me to the fact that it is really important to follow the GM midi mapping when you create a new drumkit, and right he is!
Since we are in the middle of the Hydrogen spring drumkit contest I updated the info in the H2 manual right away, but while doing that i noticed that there is something very weird going on with Hydrogen's 'GM kit' : is't not GM compliant  :-(

While figuring out the correct mapping i decided to create a GM compliant drumkit template, and added something extra ;-)

Hydrogen drumkit creator script

Some time ago we (the Hydrogen team) launched the first edition of the 'Hydrogen Spring Drumkit Contest'.
The goal of this contest is to encourage the Hydrogen users to contribute new drumkits.

The goal of the 'Hydrogen drumkit creator' script is to make it easier to make these drumkits.

Hydrogen Drumkit Contest launched

Today we finally launched the Hydrogen Drum Kit Contest !

It turned out to be a lot more work than expected : finding the jury members, preparing the contest page, thinking about the prizes, what license should the drum kits be released under, the disclaimer, start/stop dates ...

I'm quite curious about the response, hopefully some good kits will be submitted !
I'll be preparing 1 or 2 drum kits myself (but that's a secret) and maybe make some screencasts while doing it.

New toys !

This weekend i ran out  of excuses for not recording a song : i bought me an AT2035 mic + a Nano Patch plus volume control.

So now i have a decent mic, a Saffire LE as audio interface, my Linux DAW and the Nano Patch to control the volume of my KRK VXT6 speakers.

Hit songs are on the way ... any minute now ...   ;-)