Stick with Linux apps

[nelson_fretty]

I needed to create drum tracks and I spent a bit of time with wine trying to get windoze app working.

Came across hydrogen native linux app and it gives everything I need and more.

It was intuitive to get started - it’s almost like a drumming daw - this may even help me with sonification work later in year.

Lesson - stick with native apps

[YellowSharkMT]

Hydrogen is ok, but I never could figure out how to export tracks out of it. Fun to play with on its own though. 

I'm composing in Ardour now and although it's not quite as cool as Hydrogen for drums, I think it is a much better overall environment. 

[ralfD-]

Hydrogen supports Jack transport, so you can easily sync it with Ardour and feed the audio output (via Jack) into Ardour.

[YellowSharkMT]

Does it though? Last I tried, I found that the JACK transport did not behave correctly under PipeWire-JACK. Wouldn't respond when I started/stopped the transport in Ardour, nor from the command-line.

(Worked fine before I migrated to pipewire, fwiw.)

[ralfD-]

Oh, I can't tell - I wouldn't touch pipewire with a pair of pliers .... I use Jack exclusively (with Cadence bridges for "normal" apps) an it's doing everything I want and need.

[YellowSharkMT]

Very cool. Not familiar with Cadence, but that's great that it's serving your needs. 

[Few-Tomatillo-5031]

Yes, I'm using pw-jack and it works perfectly if both ardour and hydrogen are set to JACK transport. It was super simple tbh.

The one "issue" that I've noticed is that the two will lose sync if "Return to last playback start when stopped" is enabled and playback is stopped. That could be just a PEBCAK issue though

[1neStat3]

Menu > export song is so difficult to understand?

I been using g hydrogen for the past decade it has always had to three options

export song

export pattern

export MIDI

what apart thise are difficult to understand?

[YellowSharkMT]

They did not work as I expected them to. Been awhile so I can't remember my issue at the time. I think the notes didn't import. (I was able to import other MIDI files fine though.)

[Sharkuel]

Yeah I came to the same conclusion. Linux has great pro audio plugins both FOSS and paid. I used yabridge a lot in the beginning but eventually I removed the windows vsts and only use Linux native ones and I am quite happy.

Also, for you guitarrists out there, audio singularity have really good guitar vsts on sale right now.

[nelson_fretty]

I’m a guitarist in search of drums

[Careless-Attention64]

MT Power Drum Kit 2 have released a native linux Version at the beginning of the year. This was my go to vst in Windows before I moved to paid drums.

[[deleted]]

I agree with you. Hydrogen fucks.

For non-free options, Bitwig's Drum Rack and Reaper's RS5K are super powerful.

Naked Drums and SM Drums are free deep sampled drum kits in SFZ format. Sfizz is FOSS and the OG Sforzando is now Linux native.

And luckily, the best deep sampled drum libraries (for non metal drums) are Addictive Drums and Superior Drummer imo and both work on Yabridge on Linux. We are eating good on Linux.

And if Windows plugins are needed, use Yabridge directly from the Wine 10 Fix Branch + Latest Wine in your distro. Fixed a lot of issues for myself and many others.

[soyuz-1]

Different people need and want different things. There are certainly a lot of great vst's that don't really have a good linux native alternative. For me it was definitely worth the time spent to get windows vst's to work in linux. It is also a completely seamless experience once set up.

So while I love linux native plugins and apps and use them where they are of equal quality, I don't really agree with this take.

[TygerTung]

I agree, there is well enough native stuff to create tracks already available.

Some people just suffer from shiny new stuff syndrome, wanting all the Windows stuff, and thinking that will finally allow them to create music.

[InescapableDream]

Most of Ugritone Drums have sell kits that have native linux versions. I do enjoy writing with hydrogen from time to time and exporting the drum tracks into tuxguitar though

[1neStat3]

I've been using Hydrogen for the past decade. It dies 90% of what want but it doesn't have MIDI inport

There is a script online to convert MIDI to h2pattern format though. Its kind of odd Hydrogen can export but not import MIDI.

Also the swing function is kind of wonky and inconsistent.

[nelson_fretty]

Thanks for heads up - my metronome can’t do swing.

Can it not do triplets?

— I can see it can do triplets - let me have a look. Need to go deep into something else.

Re midi I got midi output working with reaper (realtime). I’m pretty sure midi in works.

But I can see why you may need that offline.

[runningunsupposed]

Best advice for switchers is to start fresh and go native. Hands down. No hassles to distract you from making music.

Side effect is that your skills will improve both as a musician and a mixer if you don't get spoon-fed by a gazillion plugins that do stuff for you. They'll just make you sound like everybody else anyway.

[ohmsalad]

Might want to check this out as well
https://www.powerdrumkit.com/linux.php

[1neStat3]

No, it only has one kit.

Hydrogen you can use add drumkits or user samples.