Beat Making
The 5 Best Online Drum Machines for Inspiring Creativity
Drum machines made their way into the music lexicon in the late 80s when a handful of legendary machines (that were slightly under-rated at the time) gave birth to electronic music.
Genres like hip-hop and house music spawned from the powerful sounds of the TR-909 and TR-808—today electronic and trap would not exist without them.
Drum machines are super fun to work with and they’re still an excellent way to create music!
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So, it’s no surprise that there are tons of interesting online drum machines available to play with. Let’s dive in.
What is an online drum machine?
An online drum machine, also called a virtual drum machine, is a program that allows you to create your own drum tracks and patterns entirely online. At a minimum, it will include percussion and drums, and let you change the rhythm and tempo of your beat.
Unlike hardware-based drum machines, which are physical pieces of equipment you connect to your computer, online drum machines are browser-based. You don’t need to download any software or even any drum VST plugins. Some will even let you download your creations to your DAW.
Benefits of online drum machines
There are plenty of free DAWs that offer pretty detailed drum machine options that can be easily recorded—so what’s the benefit of online versions? The best online drum machines are easy to use and affordable, making them perfect for beginners. (Hardware drum machines can run anywhere from hundreds to even thousands of dollars!)
Another benefit: They’re just plain fun. Each one is a little different, giving you multiple creative interfaces to experiment with new ideas.
Best online drum machines
Here are five online drum machines that stick out to us. Each one is unique and fun to use—they’ll totally get your creative juices flowing.
1. Creator
Creator is the new online beat-making machine from LANDR Samples. It’s essentially a multi-track looper that allows you to stack up to eight loops to hear how they sound together.
Best of all, Creator is capable of time stretching and pitch shifting any sample. So you can pick a loop and modify it to fit your chosen BPM or key.
That makes Creator an excellent online drum machine because you can sift through thousands of drum loops on LANDR Samples and build your perfect drum pattern.
It’s super easy to filter through hi-hat top loops, kick loops, percussion arrangement loops and much more to create a unique drum track.
It’s super easy to filter through hi-hat top loops, kick loops, percussion arrangement loops and much more to create a unique drum track.
Once you have drum patterns you like, all you have to do is download the time-stretched and pitch-shifted samples and you can use them straight in your DAW arrangement.
It’s truly a next-level way to piece together sounds and create interesting new drum tracks.
There’s even a handful of free loop packs to help you get started with your first Creator beat!
2. The Infinite Drum Machine
Here’s a really cool AI drum machine from Google’s experiments lab.
At its core The Infinite Drum Machine is a simple 16 step, four-track sequencer. But, the way its sounds are organized is what makes the drum machine so special.
Instead of relying on humans to organize the sample library, this AI drum machine uses programming to group similar sounds together.
The result is displayed beautifully on a scatter graph that uses color-coding to show how the AI tool grouped each sound together.
Dragging around the circles allows you to play with the sounds used in the four-track sequencer, so once you have a cool beat looping you can find some cool sounds to use.
It’s a super futuristic, fun and free online drum machine you can use to play around with making beats!
3. Drumbit
Drumbit is a classic online rendition of the modern software drum machine. It’s a simple version of the kind of drum machine you might find in a free DAW or drum machine plugin.
You can click on the exact beat you want, apply effects like reverb and delay, change sample kits and more.
If you’re looking for a quick way to dive into the basics of programming a standard drum machine, definitely try out Drumbit.
4. E 909 Elements Euclidean Rhythm Composer
Here’s a completely unique way of looking at online drum machines.
Euclidean rhythms are an alternative music theory concept that looks at rhythms differently. Essentially, Euclidean rhythms are built on three pillars—steps, pulses and offset.
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Steps are the number of steps in a pattern, typically 16. Pulses define the number of beats in a pattern and offset tells the starting point for each sequence.
Euclidean rhythms sound like they may be complicated, but it’s really just another way of looking at rhythm—in fact, almost all rhythms in western music can be explained by some Euclidean combination of steps, pulse, and offset.
In any case, the best way to understand Euclidean rhythms is by playing with a Euclidean sequencer.
E 909 Elements is a great free online drum machine that allows you to create Euclidean rhythms of your own.
It’s super easy to tweak the step, pulse and offset parameters to tweak and see how it looks in a Euclidean sequence.
It’s probably the most unique and interesting beat-making machine on this list, so definitely take some time to hear how different combinations sound.
5. Roland 808303.studio
Here’s a re-emulation of the classic TR-808 drum machine from the original manufacturer, Roland.
Roland 808303.studio lets you play with the original samples and sounds from the 808 and 303 machines with a visually appealing sequencer for each instrument.
You can even load in some pre-made drum patterns and tweak the sound in similar ways to how the original 808 and 303 machines used to work.
For a deep dive into the classic drum machine sound, this is a great virtual drum machine to check out!
Drumbot 3000
Online drum machines are like jet fuel for your creativity in the studio.
The simple act of playing around with a sequencer is often the first step for writing an entirely new track.
The best online drum machines are designed to help get your creative juices flowing and present interesting and unique workflows that you might not find in a DAW or groovebox.
Ready to dive into the world of drumming? Sign up for LANDR Samples for access to the Creator tool and thousands of drum samples.
Alex Lavoie is a drummer, music producer, songwriter and marketing professional living in Montreal, Quebec. He works as a staff writer at LANDR by day and writes indie post-punk tunes in his band UTILS while moonlighting as drummer for folk-rock outfit The Painters. Connect with Alex Lavoie on LANDR Network!
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