TUTORIAL - CREATING A SIMPLE DRUM LOOP
HammerHead is a very intuitive program and you'll get the hang of it pretty fast if you just play around with it.
Still, here's a beginner's guide on how to create a simple drum loop that, when we're finished, hopefully will
sound something like this:
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| 1. |
Start HammerHead Rhythm Station (first make sure the above RealAudio file has stopped playing. You can stop it manually by right-clicking on the play button and selecting "Stop").
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| 2. |
Select Channel 1. You do this by clicking on the button saying Channel 1. The button then should light up. The other channel buttons are blackened out. (Look at those cool leds!)
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| 3. |
Choose your instrument. We'll take the "Hardcore 909 BD 1". You can find it in the pull-down menu underneath the Channel 1 button. All notes you enter in channel 1 will now be these 909 bass drums.
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| 4. |
We'll edit this pattern on the fly... This means that you let the pattern play while entering notes. You can then hear immediately what you do. Do so by clicking on the Play button.
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| 5. |
Look at the row of sixteen colored buttons. This represents one measure. One measure consists of four beats, which are made out of four ticks. Using these buttons you can enter note-on messages.
Click on the first of every four buttons. (The first, fifth, etc...) These are the yellow colored ones. You should hear a basic "four-to-the-floor" bass drum rhythm repeat over and over again.
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| 6. |
We'll add snares on every other beat. Select Channel 2. Again, this button lights up and you should also see that none of the "measure buttons" (the blue and yellow ones) now are lit.
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| 7. |
Choose "909 Snare" as your channel 2 instrument and click on the second and fourth of the yellow buttons. Now your beat should go "boom - tschuk - boom - tschuk..." =)
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| 8. |
Even though your beat is incredibly cool, it might feel a bit monotonous after a while. We need a fill-in at every fourth measure!
Change the "Total" measures to 4 by clicking on the right-arrow. You should hear the beat play one measure, then stop for three measures before it starts over.
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| 9. |
To copy your existing pattern into the three "empty" measures, select Edit --> Copy measure (all 6 channels).
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| 10. |
Then set the "Current" measure to 2 by clicking on the right-arrow next to the Current measure display. Now you can paste the pattern you copied from measure 1
into measure 2 by clicking Ctrl-V or by choosing Paste on the Edit menu.
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| 11. |
Repeat step 10 for measure 3 and 4. Exactly how copy & paste works in HammerHead is explained in detail in the manual. When you're done, the loop should be playing continuously again.
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| 12. |
If Current measure is set to 4, you can now add a funky bass drum variation to this measure. Select "Channel 1" (the bass drum) again.
If you haven't screwed up so far, all yellow buttons should be lit. Then click on buttons 11, 15 and 16.
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| 13. |
Hear the difference on every fourth bar? Now you can start adding new instruments and breakbeats (the instruments in brackets) and changing the old ones to add some
complexity to this basic drum beat. Experimenting is the secret to everything.
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