What is the app that makes drum beats?

Drum machine apps have become incredibly popular over the last decade as music production technology has advanced. These apps allow users to easily create drum beats, patterns, and full percussion tracks right on their mobile devices. Drum machines were originally hardware devices used extensively in the 1980s and 90s by artists like Prince, Depeche Mode, and Dr. Dre. Now, with drum machine apps, that same functionality is available as a simple download on your smartphone or tablet.

Drum machine apps have exploded in popularity recently as they provide an easy and fun way for anyone to make beats. Musicians use them for songwriting and production, DJs use them for mixes and live performance, and casual users enjoy the creative outlet. There are drum machine apps available on both iOS and Android, with some of the most popular including Koala, BeatMaker, and Hiphop Beats. Their accessibility and on-the-go nature make them a staple for modern music production.

History of Drum Machines

The first known drum machine dates back to 1930 with the invention of the Rhythmicon by Leon Theremin and Henry Cowell. The Rhythmicon used vacuum tubes and could produce up to sixteen different rhythms simultaneously (https://www.musicradar.com/news/a-short-history-of-the-drum-machine). However, it was more complex laboratory equipment than a commercial product. The first commercial drum machine called the Rhythm Ace was introduced by the Wurlitzer Company in 1959 and offered eleven preset rhythms. Rhythm Ace drum machines became popular for providing percussion accompaniment in pop music. In the 1960s and 70s, primitive drum machines like the Rhythm Ace were used by numerous pop artists to provide basic percussion rhythms in their music.

Top Drum Machine Apps

There are many excellent drum machine apps available for a variety of devices and budgets. Some popular options include:

GarageBand (iOS, Mac): Apple’s free DAW allows users to program realistic drums with a full drum kit or from built-in electronic samples. It even features legendary session drummers that can play along to any tempo or genre.

iDrum (iOS): This $4.99 app turns your device into a fully functional drum machine with realistic sounds and unlimited sequencing flexibility. Great for songwriters and guitarists. Choose from drums kits like Rock, Pop, R&B, and Metal.

Key Features of Popular Drum Machine Apps

Drum machine apps offer a variety of useful features to help users create custom beats. The most popular drum apps include expansive libraries of drum sounds and loops to choose from covering multiple genres like hip hop, EDM, rock, jazz and more.

For example, DM1 – The Drum Machine provides over 600 drum sounds ranging from acoustic kits to electronic tones. Users can tap out drum patterns on the virtual pads and edit sounds with controls for pitch, volume, attack and more.

Sharing completed beats is also simple in most drum apps today. EasyBeats enables exporting beats as wav files to use in other music projects or share online. The app also has features to customize drum kits, resample audio, add effects and sequence drum patterns.

With powerful mixing tools, vast sound libraries and options to share creations, drum machine apps put professional-grade beat making right on your smartphone.

Making Beats

Creating drum patterns and rhythms is one of the most important aspects of making music with drum apps. Popular apps like Drum Pad Machine provide a range of tools to build beats from scratch.

Most drum apps contain a virtual beat pad grid with drums, cymbals, and other percussion mapped to each pad. You can press these pads to add different sounds in sequence to assemble your drum pattern. Many apps also include a sequencer tool to quickly program and edit a repeating drum pattern. The most advanced drum apps offer capabilities to adjust timing, velocity levels, and overall patterns and fill breaks to create more complex rhythms.

The good news is that even if you’re not a trained drummer, it’s generally quite intuitive and easy to start tapping out beat patterns on the virtual pads. With a few tweaks, you’ll be producing your own drum loops in no time. A key advantage of drum machine apps is that anyone at any skill level can explore beat making.

Customizing Sounds

Most drum machine apps offer options to customize the sounds in your beats by importing your own samples. For example, My drum pad: Custom drum pad & (source) allows you to import your own WAV and MP3 files to use as drum sounds. The app has options to tweak the volume and playback speed of each sound. You can also add effects like reverb, distortion, and flanger to give your sounds more depth and character.

Other apps like Real Drum (source) provides an extensive library of preset drum kit samples to choose from. You can mix and match drum sounds to build fully customized drum kits. Each drum sound has a range of controls to shape the volume, pitch, decay, and more. Effects like compression and equalization allow you to polish and enhance your newly created drum sounds.

The ability to import and manipulate sounds gives you creative freedom when designing your own signature drum tones. Building custom drum kits tailored to your music genre of choice allows you to make truly original beats.

Sharing and Exporting

Many of the top drum apps enable you to easily share your beats and collaborate with others. Drumap is a great example of an app that offers multiple sharing and exporting options. Once you’ve created a beat in Drumap, you can share it directly to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Drumap even has built-in communities where you can chat with other beatmakers, promote your music, or find collaborators.

In addition to social sharing, most drum apps also allow you to export your beats as audio files. For example, EasyBeats 3 Drum Machine enables you to export your creations as WAV files that you can then use in other audio production software. This makes it easy to incorporate your drum beats into full songs or compositions.

The ability to share beats socially and export high quality audio stems gives drum machine apps tremendous creative flexibility. You’re no longer limited to just making beats – you can truly collaborate, promote and distribute your rhythmic creations worldwide.

Popular Genres

Drum machine apps have been used to create hit songs in a wide variety of genres like EDM, hip hop, and rock beats. The drum patterns and rhythms from these apps help producers and musicians layer the foundation of a track in popular styles.

EDM genres like house, techno, and trance rely heavily on steady, driving beats from drum machines. The rhythmic grooves give DJs a consistent tempo to mix and blend tracks. Apps like Drum Pad Machine and Drumgenius make crafting these 4/4 dance rhythms simple with loads of EDM drum kit sounds.

Hip hop producers have crafted iconic beats for decades using the rhythmic chops and breaks from drum machine apps. The classic boom-bap sound of early 90s hip hop was defined by the gritty kicks and snares from the legendary SP-1200 and MPC samplers. Modern apps like iMPC carry this sound forward with classic breakbeat samples and grooves.

Even rock music has embraced drum machine apps for the tight, metronomic timekeeping. Songs like Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer” and Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight” derived their rhythmic foundations from programmable drum machines that kept flawless tempo. Apps like DM1 replicate the iconic sounds of classic beatboxes which influenced decades of popular music.

Advantages of Drum Machine Apps

Drum machine apps provide several key advantages over hardware drum machines. First, they offer greater portability. Since drum apps run on smartphones and tablets, you can make beats anywhere without having to carry around heavy gear (Source).

Drum apps also provide more affordability. Top apps often cost less than $10, whereas hardware drum machines can run hundreds or thousands of dollars. This makes high-quality beat making more accessible to more people.

Finally, drum apps enable greater creativity. Their touch interfaces often allow for faster sound tweaking and beat making compared to hardware units with knobs and buttons. And drum apps provide vast sound libraries to fuel creative beat making.

Conclusion

In summary, drum machine apps allow anyone to easily create custom beats and percussion tracks. Top apps like BeatMaker and Hydrogen give users tons of drum kits, effects, and editing tools to craft unique rhythms. You can tap out beats on a pad controller, draw them in on a timeline, or even use MIDI instruments.

The best thing about these apps is their versatility. You can build an entire track from scratch, export stems to drag-and-drop into other projects, or jam along live. Their samples and synth engines provide loads of sonic variety. So whether you’re producing hip hop, house, techno, or just want some virtual drums to play with, drum machine apps put professional-grade beat making right at your fingertips.