A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument that creates percussion sounds, drum beats, and patterns.
Drum machines may imitate drum kits or other percussion instruments, or produce unique sounds, such as synthesized electronic tones. A drum machine often has pre-programmed beats and patterns for popular genres and styles, such as pop music, rock music, and dance music. Most modern drum machines made in the 2010s and 2020s also allow users to program their own rhythms and beats.
Drum machines may create sounds using analog synthesis or play pre-recorded samples.
Our recommended drum machine software is captured in one of our legendary rating charts. We only feature free and open source goodness.
Let’s explore the 5 drum machines. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, a screenshot of the software in action together with links to relevant resources.
| Drum Machines | |
|---|---|
| Hydrogen | High quality and sophisticated drum machine |
| Geonkick | Synthesizer that can synthesize elements of percussion |
| orDrumbox | Real-time drum machine and audio sequencer |
| DrumGizmo | Multichannel, multilayered drum plugin and standalone application |
| avldrums.lv2 | Drum sample player plugin dedicated to Glen MacArthur’s AVLdrums |
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |