Build drum beats
the way drummers think.
A guided wizard walks you through kick, snare, cymbals, ghost notes, and embellishments. Or open the full pattern editor and place every hit yourself.
Two ways to build
Start in the wizard and a groove takes four musical decisions — kick-snare anchor, embellishments, cymbal layer, hi-hat foot. Drop into the editor when you want to place every hit yourself.
Guided wizard
Step through kick-snare anchor, embellishments, cymbal layer, and hi-hat foot. Make musical decisions without staring at a grid.
Full pattern editor
Place every hit on every voice at any subdivision. Tap cells to cycle through ghost, normal, accent, and off.
Genre presets
Start from rock, jazz, funk, Latin, hip-hop, metal, worship, and more. Tweak from there.
Ghost note routing
Add ghost notes to specific voices with per-beat placement control. Humanize your patterns.
Odd and mixed meters
Build beats in any time signature from 2 to 13 over /4 or /8, with mixed subdivisions per beat.
Share & export
Publish to the community. Share via link, export as video and notation.
The beat builder flow
Under the hood
The wizard builds in the order you'd add parts at the kit: lock the kick and snare, then layer cymbals, ghost notes, and the hi-hat foot on top.
Anchors
Genre-tagged kick-snare skeletons. Rock: kick on 1&3, snare on 2&4. Funk: syncopated kick. Jazz: feathered kick. The anchor is the non-negotiable backbone.
Embellishments
Ghost notes, kick syncopation, snare accents, and cross-stick mode. Each has per-beat control — decide exactly how busy each beat gets.
Cymbal layer
Configure density (quarter → 32nd), sticking (right-only, alternating, paradiddle), and velocity shape (downbeat swell, offbeat accent, flat).
Voice routing
Right hand on hi-hat, ride, or hi-hat/snare weave. Left hand on snare, hi-hat, or snare/hi-hat weave. Doubles route to the alternate surface.
Hi-hat foot
Optional pedal patterns: 2&4 chick, quarter notes, eighth notes, offbeats, or clave. Pairs naturally with ride on the right hand.
Tom beat mode
Floor-tom-driven grooves — the tom is the backbone, not decoration. Rolling floor tom ostinato with accent departures to high and mid toms.
Practice tips
Lock in note for note
The app plays the pattern; your job is to land every hit with it. Start at a tempo where nothing feels rushed.
Repetition over variety
A two-bar funk groove at 80 BPM for 5 minutes builds more muscle memory than 10 different beats played once.
Build layer by layer
In Learn mode, mute instruments and isolate the kick-snare skeleton. Unmute one voice at a time.
Turn off the click
Once the groove is solid, disable the metronome. If you can hold tempo with only the drum pattern, your internal clock is working.
Practice this in DrumShed
Free on the App Store & Google Play
Every drummer needs
a home base.
Build your first beat in under a minute.
Then learn it: tap Learn This on your new beat and follow the day-by-day tempo ramp — a practice path drafted for you, one day at a time.
Browse beats from our community →