Time & date
Virtual Drums
Hit the drums with the mouse or your fingers, or play them from the keyboard using the letter on each drum. Record a take and download it as a WAV file.
The take starts at your first hit and stores which drum you hit, when and how hard — so you can switch kits and play it back or download it with the other sound. Recording a new take replaces the old one.
Keyboard map and low-latency tips
Hold Shift with a key for an accented, louder hit.
- Use wired headphones or speakers. Bluetooth headphones add a delay of their own, often well over 100 ms, that no web page can remove.
- Close other tabs and apps that are playing sound, and keep this tab in front: browsers slow down background tabs.
- The page asks the browser for its lowest-latency audio mode. The figure under the kit is what your browser reports for its output path once audio has started; it does not include the delay of Bluetooth devices or of the touch screen itself.
- On a phone, tap with the pad of your finger rather than dragging, and several fingers at once work for playing two drums together.
Works in your browser. No account needed.
Frequently asked questions
Why is there a slight delay between my hit and the sound?
Every device has some output latency: the browser hands sound to the system in small buffers, and the system passes it on to your speakers. This page asks the browser for its lowest-latency mode and, once sound has started, shows the output latency the browser reports. Bluetooth headphones add a delay of their own, often well over 100 ms, and touch screens take a few milliseconds to register a tap. For the tightest feel, use wired headphones or speakers and keep the tab in front.
Can I play two drums at the same time?
Yes. On a touch screen each finger is handled separately, so a kick and a crash hit together sound together. On a computer you can press several keys at once, although many keyboards cannot register every combination of three or more keys. The mouse plays one drum at a time.
Where do the drum sounds come from?
They are synthesised in your browser — there are no sample files to download. The Electronic kit follows the recipes of classic analogue drum machines: a sine-wave kick that sweeps down in pitch, a snare made of two tones and filtered noise, and hi-hats and a cowbell built from square-wave oscillators. The Acoustic kit models drum heads as a few decaying resonances plus a stick or beater click, and cymbals as dozens of inharmonic partials. It is an approximation of a real kit, not a recording of one.
What does the recording contain, and what is in the WAV file?
Record does not use your microphone. It notes which drum you hit, how hard and exactly when, measured on the audio clock. Because the take is a list of hits, you can change kits and play it back or download it with the other sound. The WAV file is rendered from those hits as 16-bit stereo at 44.1 kHz, with the drums placed across the stereo field as seen from the drummer's seat. It starts at your first hit and ends when the last sound has died away. A take can be up to 10 minutes long.
Does the closed hi-hat cut off the open hi-hat?
Yes, as on a real kit, where the two cymbals of a hi-hat cannot ring while they are being closed. A closed hi-hat hit, or a new open hi-hat hit, silences a ringing open hi-hat within a few milliseconds. This happens both when you play and in the downloaded WAV.
Is anything uploaded?
No. The sounds are made, played and recorded in your browser, and the WAV file is created on your device. Your chosen kit, layout and volume are remembered in this browser; takes are not saved, so download a take you want to keep before leaving the page.
About this tool
This virtual drum kit has twelve pieces: kick, snare, rim, hand clap, closed and open hi-hat, high, mid and floor toms, crash, ride and cowbell. You can play it on the drawing of a drum kit, which puts every piece where a drummer would expect it, or on a four-by-three grid of pads, which gives each sound a large target on a small phone screen. Every piece shows its keyboard letter, and the keys are grouped so the left hand covers the hi-hats, snare and rim while the right hand takes the toms, ride and cowbell.
Dynamics come from where you hit. A stroke in the middle of a drum or pad plays at full velocity and the level falls smoothly towards the rim, so you can play ghost notes on the snare edge and accents in the centre. Velocity changes loudness along a curve similar to a drum pad's rather than in a straight line, which keeps quiet notes quiet. Keyboard hits play at 80% velocity, or at 100% with Shift held down.
The two kits are synthesised on your device rather than downloaded: the kit you last used is prepared in the background when the page opens, and the other the first time you switch to it, which takes a fraction of a second. The Electronic kit has the booming kick, snappy snare and metallic hi-hats of the 808 and 909 drum-machine sound; the Acoustic kit is modelled on a rock kit with a short, punchy kick, a snare with wire buzz and shimmering cymbals. Both are placed in stereo, with the hi-hats and crash on the left and the ride and floor tom on the right.
The recorder is meant for trying out fills and grooves and saving the ones you like. It stores the timing and velocity of each hit instead of the sound, so the take can be replayed on either kit and turned into a WAV file without any loss in quality. If you want to build a repeating pattern step by step rather than play it in real time, a step sequencer such as our Beat Maker is the better tool.