Beat maker
Drum machine
Press Play, then switch steps on and off while the beat loops. Every drum sound is synthesized live in your browser.
Keys: P play / stop ← → ↑ ↓ move in the grid Space or Enter switch a step
This browser cannot play Web Audio, so the drum machine has no sound here. Try a current version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.
Programming a beat
The grid is one bar of 4/4 split into sixteen steps, counted 1 e & a 2 e & a and so on. A lit step plays that sound. Start with the kick on 1 and 3, the snare on 2 and 4 and a hi-hat on every eighth note, then move things around. Select a sound's name to hear it on its own, and use M to mute a row while you work on the others.
The gold accent row makes every sound on that step louder, like the accent button on classic drum machines. A closed hi-hat cuts off a ringing open hat, as it would on a real kit, so an open hat followed by a closed one gives the familiar "tss-t" lift.
Swing delays every second sixteenth note. At 50% the steps are even; around 58% gives a loose hip-hop feel, and 67% places the off-step on the last third of the eighth note, a triplet shuffle.
Copy link puts the whole pattern, tempo and swing in the address, so you can bookmark it or send it to your band. Download WAV renders one to eight bars as a 44.1 kHz stereo file that loops cleanly: sounds that ring past the end are folded back onto the start.
Questions
Are the drums recorded samples?
No. Each hit is built from oscillators and noise as it plays: the kick is a sine wave that drops in pitch, the snare and clap are filtered noise, and the hats mix six square waves at clashing frequencies, the trick used by early analogue drum machines.
Can I use the WAV in my own music?
Yes. The file is rendered on your computer from the pattern you programmed, using sounds generated from scratch rather than taken from a sample library, so there is nothing to credit or license.
Why does the beat stop when my phone locks?
Phones pause web audio when the screen locks or the browser moves to the background. Keep the screen on while you jam, or export a WAV and play that instead.