OTHER S/W DRUMBOXES
USEFUL APPS & UTILS
TAKE OUR SURVEY!



TIPS & TRICKS

 1.  Replace the default user bank
 2.  Free your channels
 3.  Replace the sound bank
 4.  Breakbeats larger than 256 kb
1. Replace the default user bank

If you often use one particular user bank when you create your loops, you can easily replace the default user bank with your favourite one.

Step 1: Find the file Default.hub and change the name to something else, e.g. Default2.hub.

Step 2: Change the name of your favorite userbank to Default.hub and put it in the same folder as hammer.exe.

Voila! Now your user bank is automatically loaded every time you start up HammerHead.

2. Free your channels

Well, 6 channels don't seem like much, but many times you can "free" at least one or two. If you are combining two or more drum sounds to get a new sound (I like to use "Hardcore 909 BD" together with "909 Clap" and "Hard BD" to get a mean sounding kick drum) and you're not using two or more of these drums other than in combination with each other; make them into a user sample!

You can do the same thing if you have a drum sequence that repeats itself throughout the pattern. Make it into a user sample, but check "Stretch to Measure" this time. Just remember to use approximately the same BPM when you stream the first pattern to disk as you will in the final pattern.

3. Replace the sound bank

It is possible (but not easy and not recommended - an ordinary .hub will almost always be sufficient) to replace the default sound bank.

The drum sounds are stored in "Custmgui.dll". If you open that file as raw sound data (16 bit/44.1 kHz/mono) you can replace the hits with your own samples, or edit the existing ones. The new sounds must be of the exact same length as the old ones (they can be shorter, but then you'll have to add silence after the sample until the next sound starts), and that's what makes this method quite difficult (Tip: if you are a Sound Forge user, the Auto Region tool can be a great help). The total length of the file mustn't be changed either.

The names of the instruments won't change of course; if you replace the 909 BD sound it will still be called 909 BD in HammerHead.

Make sure you make a backup copy of the file before you start fiddling around with it!

A more in-depth guide on this subject, Messing with HammerHead, can be found at this site.

4. Breakbeats larger than 256 kb

Have you ever wanted to use a sample as a breakbeat in HammerHead, but it exceeded the Userbank Creator's limit of 256 kb?

Well, if you have a decent wave editor with a "pitch shift" option you can use that to decrease the file size. Simply raise the pitch of the sample until the sample is smaller than 256 kb (higher pitch = shorter sample = smaller file). If you check the Userbank Creator's "stretch to measure" option, HammerHead will adjust the pitch to fit the tempo anyway, so the sample's pitch does not affect how it sounds in HammerHead. You might lose some sound quality if you use the sample in a pattern with low BPM though.

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