Hydrogen

Hydrogen is an advanced drum machine for GNU/Linux. It's main goal is to bring professional yet simple and intuitive pattern-based drum programming. According to http://www.hydrogen-music.org/.

Its free, or at least it was free when I downloaded it a couple years ago. Recording acoustic drums in a room-studio is a pain. I have no budget for mic kits and stands and a mixer to handle all the mics. (not to mention the fact that room it's self is not at all acoustically designed for this) So a good drum machine is the best thing for getting tracks together in a days time. If done right, all you notices is that your drummer isn't all that creative. Don't get me wrong. I'd rather have live drums played by a pro than a segments of drum loops, but you gotta do what you gotta do. There are some free DMs out there on the web, and some that you pay out the but for. Obviously Hydrogen is not the top of the line be-all to end all, but it does make for a good starting point. I've had a little trouble getting new kits to load, so that means I'm stuck with the stock sounds. For stock sounds, they aren't that bad. With a little work this program could be a powerful little tool for the artist with more creativity than funds. The controls are intuitive, and pretty in depth. You can Eq and adjust levels (and other variants) for each sound. There are lots of nerdy/tweaky things, but I leave that alone for the most part. I give this program my seal of approval. Not bad for free!

Audacity

So I came about this program about five years ago, that tells you how up-to-date it is, and it actually does quite well. It is a recording program. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that some of the expensive, fancy programs, but for a piece of freeware it does the job. It's called Audacity and I've used it with great success. Recording and basic editing can be done very intuitively with it's simple interface. Selecting, Cutting, Pasting, Deleting, Adding silence, and tons of other operations are quick and painless. It even has tools like Eq, reverb, noise canceling, and others. I use it for the simple editing of multiple tracks and easy to understand interface. I'm a big fan of simple. Check them out: http://audacity.sourceforge.net

My Pedal Rigg

So, here it is. The key to my sound. I bet you are just dying to know. I look at it now and personally, I'm not that impressed. I mean, I just transferred my pedals to a larger board and it looks way to big for the few pedals I have. See for your self.

As you can see. Pretty Simple. Going right to left: Modtone Wah, Modetone Chorus, Visual Sound Rout 66 OD and Compression, Modtone Volume Pedal, Boss DD-20 Delay, Boss TU-2 Tuner. I like to keep the effects simple. I don't like putting anything on my board that I could see my self using in nearly every set I play. Its just too much of a hassle to put everything you own on one board and haul it around with you. I have a single Power supply (visual sound 1Spot) I've used it for the last five year and its still running strong. I plan on looking into getting a couple of pedals to help flesh out the board; boost, tremolo, and maybe another OD to place post volume pedal.

So if you have any suggestion, I'd love to hear them.

My Newest Piece Of Gear...

... is the Modtone MT-VOL Xcelerator Volume Pedal .

I know its not the most exciting piece of gear but it really is a valuable and often overlooked piece of gear. Yeah, the guy who has a massive pedal collection is going to have one, and many people may consider a volume pedal as a luxury or maybe redundant, after all, why not just use the knob on the guitar. Well these are all good points, but those who know how to use a volume wisely can explore new and interesting sound that were impossible, or at the very lest, very difficult to do with out one of these pedals.


Swells: I know that these are possible with your volume knob, but they are a pain. Personally, my hand doesn't work well enough to pull of great sounding swells just by using the volume control on my Tele. Pedals are right there at your feet waiting for there moment to shine.


Muting/ Silent Tuning: If you haven't already gotten a tuner with a silent tuning feature, or if you don't want yet another pedal between you and your amp. Often a volume pedal (such as the Modtone MT-VOL Xcelerator Volume Pedal) has a aux out that stays hot even when the output is muted (heel down). Silence when you need it is just as important as the noise you'll be making.


Chain Placement/Gain control: Like many guitarist I use the Gain on my amp to create a dirty sound, but I also use an overdrive pedal to add distortion and volume (kind of a double wammy). I've chosen an atypical spot for my volume. It is after my overdrive and before my delay. This way I can play with swells in my delay and control my overdriven sound without effecting the distortion. Although the gain from the amp will be effected. I can still control the amount of distortion the pedal is producing with the volume on my guitar (hey, Im not a virtuoso but I can still tweak it is mid-play). So in short, the pedal controls the amps gain, and the volume on the guitar can tweak the pedal and overall line signal.


A volume pedal is a great tool to have. This one is a passive modal, so it takes no juice to operate. Thats great because I'm out of room on my One Spot Chain (also a great piece of gear). Another reason I'm so excited about the particular piece of gear is that I picked it up on Amazon for what under MF's price. Shop around, there are better deals out there than the big guys, but buyer be ware, some seller are not on the ball! In the corse of this blog I convened my self I should now use my aux out for my tuner and run from my delay to the amp. Soon I hope to post a blog about my rig and what/why I use the gear that I do.


Till Next Time