Import drum track made with Hydrogen

Dear all,
I have one question. I’m building a drum track with Hydrogen to import in Ardour and add all other tracks (guitar, keyboard, and so on). Is it possible to add effects to the drum track directly within Ardour or do I have to add the effects before to import it? I mean, importing the finished drum track. Also. If the song starts, say after two or three bars, once I imported the drum track in Ardour is it possible to add the empty bars I need ahead of the song? Or is it something I have to do in Hydrogen then, as written above, import the final track in Ardour? Thank you for any help.

First question: if you Ardour and Hydrogen with jack, you can absolutely run Ardour and Hydrogen at the same time, you don’t have to “import” anything. Either A. or H. have to be “jack time master” and the other “slave”.
Second question, yes you will have to make empty bars if you don’t want the drums to start right away, there is only one starting point (time 0:00.000) for all jack-connected things.

Hi Seb and thanks alot for the answer. I didn’t know the two can work “chained”, but I’m still learning. One thing: do you know if and how is it possible to add one or more empty bars in a track? I have a drum track, only in H right now, but I should insert some empty bars at the start. Thank you again.

In Hydrogen you can export your drum track to a stereo wav fIle and then import it to a new track in Ardour. Once in Ardour you can move the region over to where you want it to start. For instance 2 bars into the song.Just make sure you have Hydrogen and Ardour set to the same tempo. Also in the options of Hydrogen you can set it for “per instrument outputs” so it will create a separate wav for each drum when you do the export.
If your song in Hydrogen started in the 2nd or 3rd bar then there would be silence there in the wav files you create so when you bring them to Ardour they would start at the 2nd or 3rd bar. If you’re asking how to add empty bars in Hydrogen, just make a couple bars at the beginning and leave them empty.

It would be best to finish the track before you import it into Ardour. You won’t be working in Hydrogen anymore. Your drum track would be a track within Ardour like any other audio track and you could add effects as you please.
If you want the drum components separated, before you export from Hydrogen, go into tools/preferences and check off “create per instrument outputs”. This will create seperate wavs for each component when you export that you would import into Ardour as seperate tracks.
If your song was already made starting on the 1st bar, then when you import the wav into Ardour just slide the wav in the track over to where you want it to start.
The way I usually work with Ardour and Hydrogen is to start some rough tracks in Ardour with the metronome or a simple beat. When I make the drum track in Hydrogen I click near the top of Ardour where it says “internal” so the it says"jack". Then in Hydrogen , beside where it shows the tempo, click “j.trans”. Now the 2 programs will start and stop in sync and the same tempo. So then I can click play in Ardour or Hydrogen and work out the drum patterns. When finished I export the drums to wav files and import them to Ardour. If you like you can also set up tracks in Ardour and connect them to the outputs of Hydrogen through jack and record. (instead of exporting and importing)

Hey Craig, thanks alot for your precious advices. Yes, yesterday I saw how to sincronyse the two, but for the tracks I already have I’ll save them the way you said, as separate instruments, so I’ll be able to work every single one in Ardour.

Hi telover, another way to sound nice may be to sync-play the MIDI from Hydrogen (or save/import in Ardour) and have a Drumgizmo pre-fader lv2 plugin inside an Ardour MIDI file, with multiple outputs to Ardour audio files IN (say: BD, kick, top snare, bottom snare, etc.) Not sure if that’s you’re looking for, but some kind of real control on every shot with that method, if you like to use gates…

@stratojuane Can you elaborate on that. Are you using Drumgizmo to control the Hydogen tracks? Is there a tutorial around for this?

Hi Strato, well thanks alot also for your advice but… it’s arabic for me, lmao. Too complicated. I still have to learn Ardour and learn why and what are regions compared to “simple” tracks. Just to name one

Thank you Craig, yes I’ve added the empty bars at the start of the song. The problem was the track was already made with the song startin at the first bar. Now I want to check how it works using Hydrogen from inside Ardour, if I understood right.
One thing: if I export a drum track as wav file, will I be able to add effect once within Ardour? Or the track must be finished first? Also. I guess if I import the wav track in Ardour, I won’t have all the drum components separated, I mean snare, toms, hihat, ride, and so on. Or?

Craig, I checked the preferences today and the “create per instrument outputs” is unchecked. Do I have to check it to export the single drum components in different files, right? I still haven’t tried, but I can do it.

@Craigpid am not aware of any tuto about that, but have seen Drumgizmo videos on youtub, mayke linked via
http://libremusicproduction.com/

what you can do:

Drumgizmo as pre-fader lv2 plugin inside an Ardour MIDI track
the input of this MIDI track receives only MIDI from Hydrogen (or you export it and import in this Ardour MIDI track)
you create [the number of Drungizmo chosen kit outputs -it’s said in a text file in the kit directory-] audio mono tracks and connect they to the Drumgizmo outputs (maybe some stereo tracks for the overhead and room output)
in certain cases, you might use gates, compressors, high/low pass, EQ… set all these plugins to sound as you like
all of this will take some time. be smart and make a session template called [name of the kit or whatever you like] that you will use later on other songs!
(oh, IIRC there’s something to do with the panoramic in the Drungizmo MIDI track, maybe unactive it?)

@telover to simplify, a region is a part of a track. it could be audio or MIDI. it could also not be in a track but only in the region list. Maybe you’ll like to go there:
http://manual.ardour.org/introducing-ardour/understanding-basic-concepts-and-terminology/

@stratojuane From what I understand then, you’re using Hydogen to play the DrumGizmo kit in Ardour instead of writing the midi data in the Ardour track, and the Hydrogen Drum kit will not be played.
@telover Yes, you need to check “create per instrument outputs”

@Craigpid you have perfectly understood my Drumgizmo lobbying! (in fact most of the times it’s not me who writes the MIDI drums part, I only modify it in Ardour if needed)

Thanks both guys.
Yes Strato, I’m reading it. I’m trying to understand the concepts. For me there’s a track where I record an instrument, so I’m trying to understand the meaning of a region or anything else.

I was thinking one thing. Instead to save the drum set as a number of instruments and import each of them in Ardour to work on, I could make the drum in H2 while is connected to Ardour and set up the volumes and everything else after all the rest of the instruments have been recorded; I mean guitars, keyboards, and so on. In this way I could avoid doing two or three extra works.
What do you think? If any of you already did it.

That’s one of the benefits of using JACK in that it gives you the flexib9il9ity to do things in any number of ways. Whatever approach you take would be valid if it works for you. I myself usually don’t export the drums from Hydrogen until most of the other stuff is done as I most likely would want to edit the drums again before finalising them.

Yep, Craig, that’s what I meant in the previous posts. Actually I’m keeping the default volume for any drum kit item, so once I’ll make the final mixing I’ll adjust them accordingly to all other recorded instruments. In this way I’ll avoid working the double or the triple. I don’t know about you, but for me building all the drum track is a huge pain in the butt specially for the fact I try to make it play the more normal and human possible.

@telover, who said “specially for the fact I try to make it play the more normal and human possible.”, (am not doing business here, just give an user advice) you might really appreciate Drumgizmo for that…

Thank you Strato, but I’m just getting better with H2 and install and learn another program would be starting over, even though there surely be some similarities. And even though the Gizmo is surely a real good program, until we’ll have a next level artificial intelligence, the only way to humanize a track is work every single note. I know that’s for insane ones, but… thank god is not classical music lasting half or an hour. Lol