When drum machines first came out they changed the way song writers made demos, studios recorded percussion and made a full drum kit available to home studios for a few hundred dollars.

Fast forward ahead to today and we have apps available for smart phones and tablet devices like the iPad that cost less than $10 bucks and can do everything those original drum machines could and more.

What are some of those apps you can get to create beats, drum loops and more on your mobile devices? That’s what we’re going to look at in this article.

Drum Meister

Drum Miester has a picture of a full assembled drum kit on screen. To play the drums all you do is click the image of the drum sound you want on screen. Creating drum beats can at first feel bit odd but once you get the hang of it the sound quality of the samples and simplicity of it makes these apps easy to use.

Vdrummer

Like Drum Mesiter there’s images of each drum from a full kit on screen in this app. By tapping the picture of the drum you want to play the sound will be played. A difference between vDrummer and say Drum Meister is the drums are not pictured on the screen as a setup drum kit, rather they are positioned in a way that the most used drums are close to each other. This layout makes it far easier to quickly tap out beats which use the snare, kick and high hat.

Korg iElectribe

Unlike Drum Meister or vDrummer, iElectribe modeled after a drumming machine. Like a drum machine you don’t need to know much about playing the drums to use this app since everything is programmed rather then played in real time. If you’re used to using drum machines like the DR machines from Roland then this Korg app will look most familiar. One big draw back is currently you cannot save or export the beats you mix which means you must re-create them everytime you need them or record them to an external device such as a laptop with sequencing software installed on it.

This is only 3 of the many apps available for drum beats, drummers and drum machines, but I feel it represents the best of what’s available. To get the most out of these apps you should have some knowledge of playing the drums and what makes a good beat.

If you’d learn more about how to play the drums check out the top drum lessons dvds. Courses like Learn & Master Drums make it far easier to learn the drums at home compared to private instruction for a lot less money.

 

 

 

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