Hexdrums: First Noodle (No talk, no drive)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"You want easy? Hexdrums is easy. The sounds are whatever the knobs are on. There are no hidden extra sound controls. The sequencer is wonderfully straightforward yet has the options to create long and complex passages on a single pattern.

This is my first pattern with Hexdrums and I created it to learn the options, so it contains a little bit of everything. Voices 1, 3 and 6 run for 24 steps; most of the others are 16 or 64; there's shuffle on voices 3 and 4; and about half the steps on voice 4 have some microtiming. Many voices use the 'play once in 4' or similar settings applied to various steps and I activated the option for those to affect the last time around rather than the first. Various voices also have accents on different steps. I replaced the cymbal samples with my own samples which is what you hear on voices 9 and 10.

I used the individual outs on the back to send the snare to the Echolocator and the low boom sample on voice 9 to the Nightverb. MIDI out on the Hexdrums controls the Echolocator clock. By that stage it was all feeling full so I didn't want to artificially squeeze in the hats so I left them for next time. Many people like to immediately apply loads of drive to the sound. I love drive, saturation, dirt, gain and distortion. But there's none here. Another thing for next time. Likewise only a tiny touch of compression. With me applying 'test amounts' of all these options, usually at random, it's a miracle it sounds as coherent as it does. Even so rolls and hits do appear at odd intervals, the result of the 24 vs 16 step interplay and the 1-in-4 steps.

Not surprisingly then I thought it best to leave the knobs alone and concentrate on muting parts to create this little demo. Obviously it's all a single take and has not been enhanced, edited or remixed in the DAW. Stupidly I had a loose cable going into the Echolocator which created a bit of hum which I did try to eliminate in the DAW.

My one sentence review so far: Hexdrums is incredibly easy to use with loads of effortless thump and a deep sequencer.

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