Drum machine
MusicHow about making your own drum beat?
Build a 16-step drum pattern with kick, snare, hi-hats, clap and tom, play it at your tempo and tap live pads on top.
Pattern
What you enter stays on your device while you use this tool. Opening a shared link sends the settings in its address to HowToolbox to prepare the page.
The drums play in a loop until you stop. Change the pattern or tempo while it plays.
Press a step to switch it on or off, or drag across steps to paint them. Arrow keys move between steps and drums; Space or Enter toggles a step. The bar has four beats of four steps.
Tap a pad, or press keys 1 to 6, to play a drum yourself, also while the pattern plays.
Tempo
100 BPM
13 hits per bar · 150 ms per step
Sound stays below a safe ceiling. Start with low volume on headphones.
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Build a 16-step drum pattern with kick, snare, hi-hats, clap and tom, play it at your tempo and tap live pads on top.
How to use
- Press the steps in the grid to switch drum hits on or off; each row is one drum and each column is one sixteenth note of the bar.
- Choose a preset to start from a rock, house or hip hop beat, or press Clear and build your own.
- Press Play, set the tempo, and keep changing the pattern while it loops. Tap the live pads (or keys 1 to 6) to play a drum yourself on top.
- The beat and tempo are saved in the page address, so you can share it as a link.
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How it works
A drum machine plays a short pattern over and over. Here the pattern is one bar of four beats, and each beat is split into four steps, so a bar has 16 steps. A step is a sixteenth note.
How long a step lasts follows from the tempo: step length = 60 ÷ BPM ÷ 4 seconds. At 120 BPM a beat is 0.5 s, so a step is 125 ms and the bar lasts 2 seconds. Slower tempos stretch the bar, faster ones squeeze it.
The drums are made in your browser, not played from recordings: a kick is a quickly falling low tone, a snare and hi-hats are shaped noise, a clap is a few short noise bursts and a tom is a similar falling tone, higher than the kick. A closed hi-hat cuts off an open one that is still ringing, as on real drum machines.
Common beats use the same few ideas: rock puts the kick on beat one and the snare on beats two and four, house puts the kick on every beat, and hip hop leaves gaps for a bouncing kick.
Worked example
How long does one loop last at 120 BPM?
- One beat = 60 ÷ 120 = 0.5 s.
- One loop = 4 × 0.5 = 2 s.
The loop lasts 2 s, with 125 ms between steps.
Frequently asked questions
Why does a step not sound the moment I press it?
The drums are scheduled slightly ahead so the rhythm stays steady even when the page is busy. A step you switch on is played the next time the loop reaches it.
Can I save my beat?
The pattern and tempo are in the page address. Copy the link, bookmark it or send it to someone to open the same beat.
Why does the beat stop when I switch to another tab?
Browsers pause sound and timing in hidden pages to save power, so the drum machine stops when the page is hidden. Press Play again when you return.
Can I make a pattern in 3/4 or add swing?
No. Each loop has sixteen evenly spaced steps in 4/4. Different time signatures and swing are not supported.
Can I load my own drum samples?
No. The six drum sounds are synthesized; the tool does not import samples.
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