Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio - Part 2: Record a Hydrogen Drumbeat

Okay, so you've planned your recording project like I told you to do in Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio - Part 1: Plan your Project. You now want to create a Hydrogen drumbeat as the backbone to your track.

To begin, start up JACK and then Hydrogen. You can begin messing around with beats and patterns to get a feel for the program. If you want a more in depth description of the Hydrogen interface check out this post: Hydrogen Drum Machine Basics.

If you are unsure of the drumbeat that you will use for the song, just write a simple one and loop it for the entire song. As long as it is set at the same timing and at the same tempo, you can replace the beat with a better one at a later stage. A useful tip to remember: always start the beat off with a count-in, it will make the recording process a lot easier and you can always remove it later. For our recording project, we are using a Hydrogen beat for U2's song: Sunday Bloody Sunday - it is available for download here: Sunday Bloodly Sunday Hydrogen Drumbeat.

Once you have finished your beat, and you can play along to it in Hydrogen, you want to record it into Ardour. So start up Ardour and create a project with whatever name makes you sleep better at night. The Ardour interface should have only one track called Master. All the future tracks will be linked to the Master bus and then output to your soundcard. You now want to create enough tracks to record your drumbeat into. Hydrogen can either output one stereo track or a stereo track for each instrument/drum. I prefer to use multiple outputs, because it's more versatile - but if you are just laying down a simple beat, rather use the single stereo output (it is easier). I explain how to enable multiple outputs in Hydrogen in this post: Multiple Outputs for Hydrogen.

To add a track in Ardour, click on File and select Add Track. A window appears which allows you to chose how many tracks you want to add and whether those tracks are going to be stereo or mono.

If you are using Multiple outputs, select mono and add about six tracks. You can then change the names of the tracks by clicking in the track name and typing what you like. Use relevant names like snare, kick, crash, etc. it will only make it easier for you later.

If you are using just one stereo output, select stereo and add one track only. Name it Drums.

You now need to connect the Hydrogen outputs to the Ardour inputs, you do this from JACK. Open the JACK connections kit by clicking on the Connect button. This looks like the below figure.


Expand the Hydrogen tab under Outputs and the Ardour tab under Inputs. You now need to connect the relevant drum outputs to the inputs of Ardour. The Hydrogen outputs are unfortunately labeled as numbers, so you have to look in Hydrogen and determine which number links to which drum. Pan each Hydrogen instrument/drum fully to the left from the Hydrogen mixer. Then link only the left output of the instrument to the mono Ardour input.

Once all your connections are linked up correctly, you can start recording. Go back to Ardour and change the tempo so that it is the same as that found in Hydrogen. You can change it by double-clicking on the number (just above the Master track) and typing in the relevant tempo. You must now arm all of the tracks by clicking on the red circle found by each track's name (Only armed tracks will be recorded to). Once all the tracks are armed, select the Record Button (red circle) on the Ardour transport bar and then select the Play button - Ardour is now recording any activity in the armed tracks. Quickly go back to Hydrogen and click the Play button. If you observe the tracks in Ardour, you will see the drum waves being recorded. When the song is finished, press the Stop button in Ardour. Your Ardour project should look something like the below figure.


Your drumbeat has now been captured into Ardour and you can leave Hydrogen behind. It is important to drag your recorded drumtrack into time with Ardour's time, if you don't, Ardour's click track will not be in time. This is done by clicking on the drumtrack and dragging it till it aligns with the bar lines of Ardour. In Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio - Part 3: Adding Effects to the Ardour Drumtrack, I will be discussing how to add effects to your drumbeat in Ardour.

Other posts you might find interesting:
Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio - Part 1: Plan your Project
Sunday Bloody Sunday Hydrogen Beat
Hydrogen Drumkits
Pimp my Hydrogen Beats
Making a Roll Sound Realistic
Hydrogen Drumbeat Templates - A Non-drummer's Best Friend