AUv3 · VST3 · AU · Free

Little Machine.
Fast Grooves.

Little Drum Machine is a free and easy-to-use drum machine for iPad and desktop. It comes with all the necessary bits and gets you making beats right away. Start with 32 included drum sounds, or import your own samples. Make grooves, fast.

Get Little Drum Machine for desktop Download Little Drum Machine on the App Store for iPad
Little Drum Machine plugin interface

From zero to groove in a minute

Little Drum Machine is for the moments when you just need drums. Pick one of twenty genre presets or hit Randomize, tweak a few steps, and you have a beat.

Make sound your way: start with the built-in sounds, load your own samples as you go, or send MIDI and let your favorite synths and drum apps do the talking.

We wanted something simple to work with in our own studio, so we built it. Now it's yours, for free.

Features

A Step Grid for Fast Beats

Sixteen steps, eight drums, all on one screen. Tap steps in, drag up or down for velocity: accents and ghost notes live right in the grid. A swing control gets things groovy.

Randomize and Mutate

Randomize is tuned to stay musical: kicks act like kicks, snares land where snares land. Mutate takes the beat you have and nudges it somewhere new. Together they're a fast way out of a blank grid, or out of a rut.

Sounds Included, and Yours Too

32 samples across the eight drums get you started, with four variants per drum you can swap per lane or even per step. Or load your own samples and build the kit you actually want.

Shape Every Sample Coming soon

A dedicated Sample tab, arriving in the next free update, tunes, trims and fades every sound: pitch, volume, start point, attack, length and decay, with a waveform view that shows exactly what will play.

Scenes and an Arranger

Every preset can hold 16 scenes: space for variations, fills, breakdowns. Chain them in the Arranger and your loop becomes a full arrangement.

Polyrhythms and Polymeters

Give any lane its own step count and loop length: eleven steps in the time of twelve, or a hat that loops one step early and drifts against the kit. One switch in Settings turns it on; until then the grid stays the classic 16-step machine.

A Mixer Where You Need It

Per-drum volume, pan, three-band EQ, mute and solo, plus master EQ and a one-knob glue compressor to make the kit sit together. No need to leave the plugin to make it sound right.

MIDI Out to Anything

Each drum can send MIDI on its own channel and note. Sequence drum synths, other apps, or even hardware: use Little Drum Machine as the brain and let something else make the noise.

Twenty Presets to Start From

Techno, House, Hip Hop, Drum & Bass, Jazz, and more: each a four-bar phrase with velocity grooves and swing already dialed in. Good starting points, not demos.

Little Drum Machine - the Arranger tab
The Arranger: chain scenes into a full arrangement.
Little Drum Machine - the Samples tab
The Samples tab: four slots per drum, with room for your own sounds.
Little Drum Machine - the Mixer tab
The Mixer: per-drum EQ, pan and level, plus the glue compressor.
Little Drum Machine - the Grid tab with Polyrhythm on
Polyrhythms: every lane running its own step count and loop length.
Little Drum Machine - the Sample tab
The Sample tab, coming soon: tune, trim and fade every sound.

Plays Well With Your Setup

Little Drum Machine runs as an AUv3 instrument on iPad, load it in AUM, Logic Pro, Cubasis, Drambo, or any other AUv3 host, as a VST3 or Audio Unit plugin on macOS, and as a VST3 plugin on Windows.

Drums, sorted.

Free, no strings attached.