Little Bit O' Bass

In my very dim and distant past (even before I worked in I.T.) I was a kid. During this time I went to school, like many kids do. One of the subjects I took while at secondary school was music, or rather in my case 'Music and Modern Technology'. The 'Music' part was your traditional type stuff - reading music, composition, that kind of thing. But the bit that interested me more was the 'Modern Technology' part.

At the time 'Modern Technology' referred to recording studios, mixers, sequencers, samplers, drum machines and the like, all of which we got to learn how to use. As you can imagine, for a technology nerd this was an amazing experience for me and I genuinely loved going to music class. The more knobs, buttons, switches and dials something had to play with, the happier I was. One particular favourite of mine was the Korg synth, which was completely awesome. I was a very happy bunny.

Check out this bad boy!  I used one at school.  It was awesome.

During this time period, at home I had a trusty old Commodore 64. And believe it or not there was sequencer software available for it. I forget the name of the program now, but it was excellent, and I even used it to create my final exam piece. Music and Computer Studies were the two subjects I got the highest grades in at school, so I think alongside computers, music really helped press all the right nerdy buttons.

When I left school I got an Amiga 500 and would use sequencer software available for that to create my little amateur electro-tunes. I'd only ever play them to myself, too embarrassed to play them to anyone else. But to be honest, they weren't really good enough to share, and it was only ever for my own amusement. Then after my Amiga, I progressed onto PCs and I did nothing at all vaguely "musical" with them. That is until this week.

Now some of you may know that I'm a bit of a Linux fan, so I wondered what was available for it in terms of sequencers, drum machines and the like. The only thing I'd heard of and used up until now was Audacity, which is an audio recorder and editor. So I did a bit of googling again and I found Hydrogen which is a drum machine/sequencer for Linux. So I downloaded it and had a play.

Hydrogen for Linux

Like I say, my creations aren't very good, and I'd probably get a lot more out of it if I read the documentation and watched the tutorial videos, but where's the fun in that? The most important thing is that it's keeping me occupied and is helping to bring back some happy memories. And I must admit there is a certain sense of achievement when I create something a little bit musical. I'm no Kraftwerk, Orbital or 808 State, but I'm having fun!

Thank you to kurisuuu for such a great photo of the Korg synth.