I remember playing with the HammerHead Rhythm Station a long time back. It was a very cool tool to play back samples I wanted for a “collage type wash” (read a large lump of noise).
But HammerHead is really a simple TR-909-like drum computer program originally aimed at the dance-scene. You know the kind of thing … Techno loops, Jungle patterns or House beats, but it’s also suitable for Hip Hop, Triphop, Rap, Industrial and almost any other music you can think of.
It’s got six channels , 29 built-in drum sounds, six complete breakbeats and the possibility to import six samples of your own and trust me that is where the fun begins.
The site has a bunch of other drum tools and best of all Hammerhead is freeware.
Go make some noise.
I too found Hammerhead good for quickly knocking out short loops and patterns, but it is limited in so many ways: it doesn’t let you easily use whatever .wav files you want (it ought to be as easy as plonking them in a folder and they should automatically become selectable in the channels), you can’t chain patterns into a complete song, it provides no synthesis and EQ options, it only offers two or three effects, it doesn’t go to 32nd notes, only has 6 channels, can’t be driven from midi beat clock from a DAW or external sequencer etc.
That’s why I developed:
FlexibeatzII at http://flexibeatz.weebly.com
Hammerhead was the inspiration for this, and like Hammerhead, it is free. You can hear complete productions done with it at http://www.myspace.com/flexibeatz
Features:
* TR909/TB303/X0X style sequencing interface
*Plays any wav files in its 10 channels
*Note resolution to 32nds
*Chain patterns up to 999 measures
*Dynamically vary pan, pitch and level of each sound in each channel, as well as each sample’s play start and end point while the sequence is playing
*Set swing and accent
*Mute and solo per channel
*Lock BPMs of sounds in channels to master tempo
*Auto stretch samples to fit a specified fraction of a measure, or to multiple measures
*Dynamically specify which sounds can cutoff (mute) which other sounds, if they are still playing
*Randomize sample selection per channel and notes per pattern per channel
*Auto-generate arpeggiator patterns
*Ability to process and add effects to the samples in each channel: reverse, 3 types of distortion, master LP filter, freely draw and apply pitch envelope to a sound, freely draw and apply LP, HP or BP filter envelope to a sound, freely draw and apply a volume envelope to a sound, chorus, delay, compression, change amplitude of positive and negative halves of the waveform independently, reverb, lo-fi (bit and sample rate reduction), 3-band parametric EQ (featuring LP, HP, BP, Lo Shelf, Hi Shelf, Notch, Peak), stutter effect, auto chop up waveform and randomly re-assemble, apply waveshaping by manipulating individual harmonics, change pitch without affecting duration, change duration without affecting pitch, vocoder, ring modulator, auto-wah
*Ability to synthesize sounds from scratch, and use these in the channels as instruments, or combine them with samples in various ways (such as FM’ing one with the other)
*Record sequence to a .wav file while its playing
*Record level slider movements
*Export patterns to .wav files without playing them
*Automatically isolate the ‘hits’ in a drum loop and export each slice as a separate .wav file, and import each slice into a separate channel
*Graphical time and frequency spectrum display of each sound in each channel
*Slave playback via midi sync to another sequencer (eg a DAW, hardware sequencer etc)