DrumFaster

The pattern generator

Set the rules — how many bars, what subdivision, which hands and feet are in and the most each may play in a row — and get a sticking nobody wrote down. Hear it, play along with it, share it with a link, and generate another when it's clean. Free in your browser; members keep a library of the ones worth coming back to.

Length
Subdivision
Who plays, and the most in a row
Accents

The first note of every hand run is louder — the runs become phrases. The feet stay even.

Every press deals a new one inside these rules.

1 bar of 16ths, both hands and feet · up to 2 R, 2 L, 4 feet in a row

RRLKKKKRLLKKRLRL

Upper line = hands, lower line = feet, beamed per beat; > marks an accent on a hand (louder, chip filled — the feet stay even). R rings higher than L so you can hear the hands; K is the kick. Hands on the snare or the pad, feet on the bass drum — or split the feet between kick and hi-hat if you're feeling brave.

80BPM

Keep playing and the generator deals the next pattern on its own, from the settings above — eyes on the pad, not the screen. The rudiment trainer's random practice, for stickings nobody wrote down.

The link opens straight onto it, notation and all; the image is the card, for stories and group chats.

Your patterns membersBrowse the library →

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How to practise a generated pattern

  1. Read it first. Say the letters in time before you play a note — R R L K K K K R — and count the beats the beams mark out. If you can't say it, you can't play it.
  2. Play it slow with the click. Hands on the pad or the snare, feet on the kick. Sixty to eighty BPM is where a new sticking gets learnt; nothing is gained by hurrying past that.
  3. Loop until it's boring, then generate. The whole point is patterns you haven't rehearsed. When one stops feeling like a puzzle, deal another — the rules stay, the sticking changes.
  4. Take it to the kit. Move the R and L between snare and toms, keep the K on the kick, and it's a fill. Move the K to the hi-hat foot and it's an independence exercise.

Why random patterns work

A rudiment book only has the stickings someone thought to write down, and after a while your hands know them: you play the paradiddle, not the notes. A pattern you've never seen puts the reading, the counting and the co-ordination back in — which is the skill a fill or a chart actually asks for. Tighten the limits (two in a row on every element) and you get single-and-double vocabulary, like a paradiddle family nobody named. Loosen the feet to four and you get hands-and-feet phrases that sound like a fill straight away.

Two in a row on each hand and none on the feet is the classic practice-pad setting: every pattern is singles and doubles, the stuff of the forty rudiments. Sixteenth triplets with feet up to three is the gospel-chops setting. Thirty-seconds with everything at one is a single-stroke roll that keeps changing hands — try it.

Keep going

Found one worth keeping? Save it, publish it, and it joins the pattern library, where drummers vote the best ones up a leaderboard — a good place to look when you want a pattern someone else has already sworn at.

When a pattern is clean, take the tempo to the tempo trainer — the link carries your BPM over — as in our guide to drumming faster. Log what you reached in the practice log, and if the feet are the weak link, the polyrhythm trainer's independence drills put the kick through every sixteenth-note permutation under a steady hat.