Chapter 19. Create a New Drumkit
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Chapter 19. Create a New Drumkit

Table of Contents

19.1. Creating a New Drumkit
19.2. Creating a New Instrument
19.3. Tips on Editing Instruments

19.1. Creating a New Drumkit

In this chapter we will show you how to create a complete drumkit. Be sure to have a look at the conceptional design of a drumkit first. Keeping this in mind we will use a top-down approach, so we will start at the Drumkit level and work our way down to the samples.

Creating a new drumkit with Hydrogen is done with the Instrument Editor. You can load samples, set envelope parameters, set the gain, and other advanced features like mute groups, a low-pass resonance filter, and pitch randomization.

[Tip]Tip

Instead of creating your own drumkit, you can also open or download an existing one.

Let's make a brand new drum kit:

  1. in the Main Menu select Drumkits → New. This will give you a single blank instruments. To add more instruments, select Instruments → Add instrument and to delete one, right-click a instrument and select Delete Instrument.

  2. Select an instrument to start editing it. This is done by left-clicking on the name of the instrument in the Sidebar. You will notice that the name of the instrument in the Instrument Editor matches the one that you clicked.

  3. Once you have your drumkit working the way you want, select Drumkits → Save As . You will be prompted for the name of the kit to save. If you wish to overwrite an existing kit, you will need to type in the same name as the kit that you want to replace.

  4. Drumkits are automatically stored in the data directory (i.e. $HOME/.hydrogen/data/drumkits).

  5. In order to share your drumkit with others, you have to export it using Drumkits → Export from the Main Menu. Select the drum kit that you wish to export, and give it a file name to save it to.

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18.4. Adjust from the Mixer Home 19.2. Creating a New Instrument