A playable drum kit and a step-sequencing drum machine in one browser page. Hit the pads with your keyboard, mouse or fingers, load a rock, funk or bossa nova beat and hear it loop instantly — nothing to install, nothing to pay for.
The first hit unlocks the audio and loads the drum samples. After that every pad fires the moment you touch it — mouse, touchscreen or the letter printed on the pad. Nothing to arm, nothing to configure.
Pick one of the preset patterns and it starts looping straight away. This is the part drum lesson pages cannot do: instead of reading a notation diagram and guessing at the feel, you hear the beat and watch which drum lands on which step.
Switch steps on and off in the grid, drag the tempo, add an open hat or a second kick. The loop keeps running while you edit, so every change is something you hear rather than something you imagine.
Most browser drum pages give you eight buttons and a beep. This one gives you a recorded kit, a real step sequencer and grooves that already sound like records.
Seven pads — crash, hi-hat, a brighter second hat, ride, kick, snare and clap — all play recorded samples, so hits have body and decay instead of clicking. Layer a crash over a kick and the two ring together the way an acoustic kit does.
Every pad is playable three ways, and all three accept more than one hit at a time. Key detection reads the physical key position, so the mapping lands in the same place on QWERTY and QWERTZ boards.
The step sequencer is the same idea as a classic drum machine: rows are drums, columns are sixteenth notes. Switch on a cell and the pattern repeats — the fastest way to understand why a beat feels the way it does.
Rock, an easy beginner 4/4, four on the floor, boom bap, pop, funk, trap, shuffle, bossa nova and half-time are loaded and looping in one click, at any tempo. Use them as they are, or as the skeleton for your own pattern.
Every one of these is a beat you can start with as a beginner. Load it, hear it, then read what makes it that groove — the same pattern in the grid and in your ears at the same time.
The one everybody learns first. Kick on 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4, eighth notes on the hi-hat running through all of it, and a crash opening the bar. The snare on the backbeat is what makes people nod; the steady hat is what holds the tempo together.
The same rock frame slowed down, with the hi-hat on the quarter notes only. Four hat hits a bar instead of eight is far easier to count along to, and slow enough that you can play the whole thing by hand on the pads.
House and dance music: a kick on every single beat, claps on 2 and 4, and the open hat lifting every off-beat. The relentless kick is what makes it feel like it is pulling you forward rather than swinging.
The 90s hip-hop skeleton: a hard kick on 1, a snapping snare on 2 and 4, and a second kick pushed late in the bar so the loop leans forward. Slower tempo and a heavier snare are what separate it from a rock beat.
Radio pop: snare and clap stacked on the same backbeats so 2 and 4 sound twice as wide, plus a pick-up kick just before the last beat that pulls the bar round again.
Sixteenth-note hats and a kick that syncopates around the downbeat instead of sitting on it. The space between the hits is doing as much work as the hits.
Rolling sixteenth hats, a single clap on beat 3 instead of a backbeat on 2 and 4, and a kick that skips around it. Halving the backbeat is what makes trap feel slow at a fast tempo.
The same kick-and-backbeat frame as a rock beat, but the hats bounce in long-short pairs instead of even eighths. It is the blues and rock-and-roll feel, and the quickest way to hear what "swing" actually means.
The Brazilian pattern: the clave played as a rim-style snare, a dotted surdo kick underneath, and a ride cymbal instead of a hi-hat keeping steady eighths. The snare landing in a different place each half of the bar is what gives it that drifting feel.
One snare on beat 3 instead of two per bar. The tempo stays high but the groove feels half as fast, which is the trick behind most drop sections.
Search for a drum beat and you mostly get lesson pages: a notation diagram, a paragraph about stick heights, and a video of someone at a real kit. That is useful if you already own drums. If you do not — and most people searching do not — you are left staring at a picture of a rhythm you cannot hear.
This page inverts that. The pattern is playing before you have finished reading about it. Load the basic rock beat and the kick, snare and hi-hat rows light up as they fire, so the diagram and the sound are the same object. Then hit the pads yourself over the top of the loop, which is the step that actually teaches you where the backbeat is.
It works as a drum simulator when you want to play, and as an online drum machine when you want to program. Nothing installs, nothing signs you up, and it runs on a school laptop just as happily as on a desktop.
Start with the kick and snare, because they are the skeleton. Put a kick on beat 1 and a snare on beat 2, then a kick on 3 and a snare on 4. Loop that on its own. Boring is fine — every rock, pop and hip-hop beat ever written is a decoration of this.
Now add the hi-hat. Eighth notes (two per beat) give you a rock beat; sixteenths (four per beat) give you something closer to funk or trap. The hat is the ruler the rest of the pattern is measured against, so keep it even before you get clever with it.
Then break the symmetry. Move one kick a sixteenth later so it lands just after the beat instead of on it. Open the hi-hat on the last step of the bar so the loop breathes before it comes round again. Drop the snare on beat 2 of every fourth bar. One change at a time, listening after each one — a beat usually goes wrong because three things were changed at once.
Finally, set the tempo last. A pattern that feels dead at 90 BPM can come alive at 115, and vice versa. Sweep the tempo while the loop is running and stop where it starts to move.
A drum loop on its own is a sketch. The moment it is worth keeping, open the beat maker from the button below and rebuild it there — the step grid works the same way, but you also get bass, melody, samples, arrangement and export, and you can invite someone into the same session to work on it with you in real time.
If the next thing you need is a tune over the top, the melody maker gives you a full piano roll with MIDI and WAV export, and the virtual piano is there when you just want to find the chords by ear first.
The full studio: the same step grid plus bass, melody, samples, arrangement and real-time collaboration. This is where a loop turns into a track.
The longer walkthrough, from first kick to finished arrangement, with a sequencer built into the page so you can follow along as you read.
Write the tune that sits over your drums, generate one from a chord progression, and export it as MIDI or WAV.
A sampled grand piano in the browser for working out chords and basslines by ear before you program them.
Timing drills that build the internal clock every drummer needs — useful once you can play the patterns but not yet lock to them.
What the studio can do — sequencer, instruments, effects and export — if you want to see it before you open a session.
Yes. The online drum kit and the drum machine grid are completely free — no account, no trial, no subscription. Every drum sound and every preset groove is unlocked the first time the page loads.
Each pad is mapped to a key and the letter is printed on the pad, so you can see the mapping while you play instead of memorising it. The cymbals and hats sit on Q W E R and the kick, snare and clap sit on A S D, right under the fingers you already rest on the home row, which means you can hold a groove with two hands. Several keys can fire at once, so a kick and a crash on beat one land together rather than one after the other.
The kit is for playing: you hit pads in real time and hear them instantly. The drum machine is for programming: you switch on steps in a grid and the pattern loops back at you. Most people start by tapping a rhythm on the pads, then place the same rhythm on the grid so it repeats while they add the next layer.
No. Everything runs in the browser with real recorded drum samples, so it works on a laptop, a school computer or a borrowed machine — no installer, no plugin, no app store.
Yes. The pads respond to touch and register more than one finger at a time, so you can hold a hi-hat with one hand and hit the snare with the other. The step grid works the same way — tap a cell to switch it on.
Ten preset patterns cover most of what beginners are looking for: a basic rock beat, an easy beginner 4/4, four on the floor, boom bap, pop, funk, trap, shuffle, bossa nova and half-time. Load one, hear it loop immediately, then move the steps around to make it your own.
Start slower than the record you have in your head. A rock or pop beat sits around 100–130 BPM, boom bap around 85–95, bossa nova around 120–140 and funk around 95–110. Programming at a slow tempo and speeding it up afterwards is much easier than fighting a pattern at full speed.
Not from this page — it is built for playing and sketching. When a groove is worth keeping, open the beat maker from the button below: it gives you the same step grid plus bass, melody, arrangement, real-time collaboration and export.
It helps with the part most beginners struggle with, which is hearing how a pattern is built. Every preset shows you exactly which drum lands on which beat while it plays, so you can see the kick–snare skeleton before you ever sit behind a real kit. It will not teach you stick technique, foot control or dynamics — that still needs the physical instrument.
Open the full beat maker to put bass, melody and arrangement under the groove — and build the song with friends in real time.