new elektro project 'BhBm' : Hydrogen + analogue synths

It has been a long, long time since i posted anything here !


Let me present you our newest elektro project BhBm (short for "Black hole in a Beautiful mind")

All drums and samples are done with H2.  Almost all bass and melody melodies are analogue synths controlled by H2 via MIDI.

Softsynths and FX are done using Carla and LV2 plugins.

I use H2 as a live sequencer in stacked pattern mode controlled by a BCR200 running, so there is no 'song', ony patterns that are enabled/disabled live > great fun !!

Check out our demo songs on Soundcloud :
Or follow us on Facebook


Enjoy and comment please !
Thijs

MOD DUO has arrived !

Hi all !

I know that it has been a loooong time since i posted anything but i do have a life you know ;-)

Anyway, i just wanted to share that my MOD DUO arrived and my son an I made a little MOD DUO unboxing video about it !

Great device, really nice build and so far the interface just blew me away !
I plan on doing some more vids on the MOD, but no promises !

Enjoy !

The 'MOD duo' on Kickstarter

Hi all,

It's happening : the 'MOD duo' kickstarter campaign is on !
The MOD team has been working on this guitar stomp box for quite some time, and everything they learned from making their prototype (the MOD quadra) has been applied in the MOD duo concept.

And I must say I'm impressed, so impressed that I just ordered one !

i'm back, with some great news !

Hi all !

I's been a while, i know, but i have some really, really good excuses for that :-)

in order of importance :


On October 11th our daughter Mare was born !
Mom and daughter are doing great and her 2 brothers treat her like a princess :-)

Secondly i have been studying really hard to get my CCNA certification, and on September 30th i finally got it !
It was a lot harder than i expected and it took a lot of time, but i'm really glad i did it.

Oh, and in between we also managed to 'upgrade' our house (+1 bedroom)
How's that for an excuse ?



Now i'm back on the linux/audio track and making some great progress with arps, synths and controllers.
More on that soon !

Grtz
Thijs

move from Garageband to Linux : can it be done ? - Part 3

- make sure you read part 1 and part 2 before reading this post -


In this post we will split up the song into different parts, making it is easier to analyse.

1) Preparation
While i was preparing this post i was looking for a way to visualize the waveform and add some sort of indication or markers to identify the different parts in the song.
My first idea was to take a screenshot of the waveform and use Gimp to add a couple of lines and some text, similar to the way Soundcloud lets you to add comments to a song as you are listening to it.
I could actually use Soundcloud to do this -and it would simplify things for you guys-, but since it's not my own work this could potentially get me into trouble (yes i know that chances are very very small, but you never know)
Exit Soundcloud, back to to Gimp.

While i was preparing to go the Gimp way i started up Audacity, loaded the song, started playing around with markers and accidentally discovered the 'label track' option.
A 'label track' is a non-audio track that lets you add comments at a specific moment in time, and also allows you to define a time range and give it a name : brilliant !

The result :

move from Garageband to Linux : can it be done ? - Part2

- read part 1 first -

Hi all,

To make it a bit easier to understand what exactly we are trying to accomplish i would like to tell you first what our current setup(s) looks like :

1) the setups
As you probably know we have been using Hydrogen live for a while now and that worked out quite well so far.  The Hydrogen setup consists out of a midi drum controller, an old laptop-in-a-box (LT1 on the drawing) and some extra wiring to be able to use the Left and Right output as 2 individual channels :

move from Garageband to Linux : can it be done ? - Part1

We (my cousin and I) are currently working on a rather interesting experiment : the goal is to move my cousins setup from Garageband (on OSX) to Linux.

First some background on the current setup(s) and where we want to end up:
Currently I'm running AmSynth + Calf Monosynth on my Ubuntu laptop and Stijn (my cousin) is running Garageband on his Macbook 13".  We both have a midi keyboard hooked up to our laptop and  use the built-in sound card.
An important detail : we are using these laptops live on stage so whatever we run it needs to be rock solid and easy to set up.

The idea to switch to Linux is not new, in fact I already dual-booted Stijn's Macbook some time ago, but it was more of an experiment because it wasn't clear what we really wanted to do with these laptops.  Since that time we started using the laptops for some songs we play with the band so now we have a better understanding of 'who-will-do-what' and also what sounds we need.

Being guitarist with 0 piano playing skills we use an _absolute_ maximum of 3 fingers to play the keyboard, so you can probably guess that we mainly use the laptops for a couple of monophonic electro/dance riffs and also some more old-school sounds like Hammond or piano as backing to create a richer sound.
Sounds pretty simple, but in fact that covers almost the complete spectrum of existing synth types : soundfont player, modular analog synth emulators, sound modeling synths ...

This should be interesting to see how/if we will move from Garageband to Linux.

To be continued ...

- read Part 2 here -

music made with linux

This is a listing of music that was (partially) made with linux and is really well recorded IMHO.
Wether you like the style of music is a totally different question of course :-)

Hope you enjoy it !

Jazzy-electro by Attack
http://sharpattack.bandcamp.com/

Electro-ambient by Pneuman (some nice Air influences)
http://pneuman.bandcamp.com/

Avant-garde rock by Platypuse Egg
http://platypusegg.bandcamp.com/album/little-street-of-happiness-2

Experimental-electro by Chordpunch
http://soundcloud.com/chordpunch

Crazy stuff by Sebkha-Chott
https://soundcloud.com/Sebkha-Chott

Metal by Pupkovem (drums are Hydrogen)
http://soundcloud.com/pupkovem/cutthroat_notalive_instrumenta


If you know of any other album/demo that was recorded using Linux be sure to let me know in the comments below!

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 ...   ;-)

Hydrogen pattern editor buttons

After finding out about some nifty 'new' features (not really new, i just didn't know they existed!) in Hydrogen i created some more mockups:

It still needs work, but it's getting better IMO !


And a previous version :

PRO DSP1000P automation with Hydrogen PART 2

The original post can be found here, but to recap :

The goal : control a hardware FX unit with Hydrogen
Why : to be able to select a specific FX per song (or part of the song)
How : using Midi + minimal tools

After some googling and great help from the Linux Audio Developer mailing list (thanks Harry, Jeremy, Clemens, Frank, Olivier, Adrian) my FX unit now switches to a specific preset whenever i jump to the next/previous song in Hydrogen !