Understanding the Rhythm Maker
Drum programming is the art of placing kicks, snares, and hats in time to create the groove that every other instrument sits on. Here's what the controls do and how to build a pattern that actually moves.
Steps and the 16-step grid
A 16-step grid represents one bar of 4/4 time divided into 16 equal slices (sixteenth notes). The kick usually sits on steps 1, 5, 9, 13 (the downbeats). The snare lives on 5 and 13 (the backbeats, beats 2 and 4). Hi-hats pepper every step or every other step. That simple template — kick on 1 & 3, snare on 2 & 4, hats everywhere — is the foundation of 90% of popular music.
Swing — the human feel
Perfectly straight 16ths sound mechanical. Real drummers and hand percussionists play the off-beats slightly late — pushing the "and" of each beat a few milliseconds back. Swing percentage controls this: 0% is mechanical, 50% is a classic shuffle (dotted-eighth feel), 65-75% is heavy swing (hip-hop, neo-soul, J Dilla). Dial in swing and a static pattern starts to breathe.
Velocity — dynamics per hit
Every hit having identical volume is the giveaway that a pattern is programmed, not played. Velocity lets you make some hits louder, some softer. Ghost notes (quiet snare hits between the main backbeats) are the secret to any funk or trap pattern feeling alive. Click a cell to toggle it, click again to set it "hard" or "soft."
Mute, solo, pan
The voice mixer lets you isolate a single drum voice (solo) to hear it in context, temporarily mute a voice, or pan it left/right in the stereo field. Panning hi-hats slightly right and ride cymbals slightly left (or vice versa) gives the kit more spatial width — even though they're synth voices, they'll feel like a real kit.
Synthesized drums
The drum sounds in this tool aren't samples — they're generated on the fly from oscillators and noise. The kick is a sine wave with a fast pitch sweep from 120Hz down to 30Hz, plus a brief click transient. The snare is white noise through a bandpass filter around 1kHz, layered with a short sine "body." The hi-hat is white noise through a highpass filter with a short decay. This approach means zero download size and every kick, snare, and hat is unique and parameterizable.
Save, share, record
Save patterns to your browser for later. Export to JSON to email or version-control your beats. Hit Record to bounce the performance to a WAV file you can drop into any DAW.
About Rhythm Maker
Create drum patterns with an 8-step sequencer. Kick, snare, hi-hat, and clap with 6 genre presets (rock, funk, hip-hop, house, jazz, reggae). Free browser-based beat maker.
How to use
- Load a preset by clicking Rock, Funk, Hip-Hop, House, Jazz, or Reggae to start with a genre-appropriate drum pattern.
- Click any cell in the grid to toggle that drum sound on or off for that step. Lit cells play; dark cells are silent.
- Drag the Tempo slider to adjust BPM between 60 and 180. The readout shows your current tempo live.
- Press Play to start the sequencer. The active step highlights as it plays — press Stop to pause anytime.
- Click Clear to reset all tracks to silence, then build your own pattern from scratch by clicking cells on each row.
Frequently asked questions
What is a drum sequencer and how does it work?
A drum sequencer is a pattern-based tool that loops through a fixed number of time slots (steps) at a set tempo, triggering whatever drum sounds are switched on at each step. This tool uses 8 steps, meaning the pattern repeats every 8 eighth notes. You build your beat by clicking cells to activate them. The sequencer fires precisely using the Web Audio API's AudioContext clock — not JavaScript's setTimeout — which ensures tight, sample-accurate timing even if the browser tab is busy. This is the same approach used by professional web-based DAWs.
How are the drum sounds synthesized?
All sounds are generated purely in the browser with no audio files. The kick drum uses an OscillatorNode set to a sine wave, with its frequency swept rapidly from 150 Hz down to near-zero and a fast gain envelope — mimicking the thud of a physical kick. The snare combines filtered white noise (BufferSourceNode through a BiquadFilterNode in bandpass mode) with a short 200 Hz sine tone for body. The hi-hat is white noise filtered through a highpass filter at 7,000 Hz, shaped with a very short decay. The clap fires three rapid, slightly offset noise bursts to simulate the natural timing randomness of hands clapping.
What BPM is right for each genre?
Hip-hop typically runs between 80–100 BPM. Reggae and dub sit around 60–90 BPM, with that characteristic half-time feel. Funk and soul span 90–115 BPM. Rock ranges widely from 90 to 160 BPM depending on style. House music almost always falls between 120–130 BPM, with the four-on-the-floor kick pattern as its signature. Drum and bass runs 160–180 BPM. Jazz rhythms are flexible, but swing patterns usually fall in the 100–140 BPM range. Experiment — the same pattern at different tempos can feel like completely different styles.
What is the four-on-the-floor pattern?
Four-on-the-floor means the kick drum plays on every beat — all four quarter-note beats in a 4/4 bar. In an 8-step 8th-note grid, that means kick hits on steps 1, 3, 5, and 7. This creates a steady driving pulse that is the foundation of house, techno, and disco music. The House preset demonstrates this. The snare or clap then falls on beats 2 and 4 (steps 3 and 7 in 8th-note terms), while hi-hats fill in the off-beats for energy. Modifying the four-on-the-floor by removing one kick hit creates the syncopation that defines techno and minimal house.
How do I make a swing or shuffle feel?
True swing quantization requires timing offsets between even and odd 8th notes — which a fixed-step grid cannot fully replicate. However, you can approximate swing by placing notes on the 'and' of beats (even-numbered steps) slightly differently. For a jazz-flavored pattern, try turning off the even hi-hat steps and letting only the kick and snare carry the rhythm at a slower tempo. For a more pronounced shuffle feel, remove every other hi-hat hit and add clap or snare on those off-positions. The Jazz preset gives you a starting point — modify it at 90–100 BPM for a laid-back groove.
Part of ToolFluency’s library of free online tools for Music. No account needed, no data leaves your device.