I have been playing with Hammerhead Rhythm Station version 1.0, a FREE software drum machine created by Bram Bos way back in 1997:
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Here’s an extract from the developer’s original notes for Hammerhead Rhythm Station:
“Aimed at the dance scene, HammerHead is a simple software drum machine similar to the Roland TR-909. You can use it to create techno loops and jungle patterns, and record your actions to a high-quality, noise-free WAV or RAW file for use with your sampler or sequencer. It includes 23 separate drum patches and six complete loops, plus a feature to implement banks with six samples of your own, making a total of 35 samples that can be used at one time. HammerHead also features adjustments for tempo, shuffle, feedback, and distortion, as well as the ability to export drum loops by measure or by entire session.” Bram Bos.
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A Quick Review of Hammerhead Rhythm Station version 1.0:
1) Installation:
2) Wav Files:
It doesn’t save them in Windows 7 on the default setting [File, Stream to disk, Whole Session]. I did recently find out that if you use the other two settings [Current measure] or [All measures] it does create wav files. Prior to that discovery I used Total Recorder “Total Recorder” instead. Once you have a wav file you can convert these to Rex loops in Reason 7 (or above) or Recycle if you want.
Pluses:
You get 35 samples in all, including 7 Bass drum samples, 7 Snare Drums, 2 closed hi hats, 2 open hi hats, 1 crash cymbal, and 6 loops, including “the funky drummer”.
You can add one of your own to each channel into one of the 6 [user] slots. You have independent sliders for tempo (from 50 – 250), shuffle, distortion and feedback. It appears to play with random velocity, so some notes are louder than others.
I have created a video where I use Hammerhead Rhythm Station in order to capture a snare drum sample.
This is the accompanying narrative from YouTube:
This is the first video in a FREE series to be featured on http://howtoprogramdrums.com
The video describes how to capture a drum machine sample from software playing inside your computer, recording it using Total Recorder and playing it back and editing it in Goldwave to create both stereo and mono .wav files.
Hammerhead Rhythm Station – Mark 1.0 is used as an example but any source could be used. It provides links to the various software products which you can start using for FREE on evaluation, which you can also Google without too much difficulty.
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Download Links:
Further reading:
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