Programmable drum machine/metronome

January 14, 2016 8:42 AM

I am looking for a good programmable metronome or drum machine or a sampler/sequencer for Android OS.

The aim is to be able to play various percussion patterns to play along with, such as the 6/8 bell pattern. Currently I have the Clave, which is great (and free!) but it only has four patterns and one percussive sound. I would like to be able to choose the sound and add more patterns.

I know there are latency issues with Android devices so I may have to use something to playback loops that I record if there is no programmable metronome or usable drum machine.

Looking through the Google Play store I am none the wiser and searching Google throws up out of date information and nonsense app aggregator sites.

posted by asok to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I think you should try looking for apps related to "kaossilator" or "kaoss pad" -- they will be sequencers that let you loop drums and all kinds of sounds. I know iOS has (an expensive) Korg Kaossilator app, but you'll just have to settle for a knock-off in the Android store. I own an actual Korg Kaossilator, which isn't what you want, but the Kaossilator 2 does let you save your loops on an SD card and export. I think maybe you can do custom time signatures.
posted by AppleTurnover at 11:33 AM on January 14, 2016

I play with a handlful of free sequencer type apps that all unfortunately have a bias towards 4/4 time signatures but are fun to knock together. Dmach because its stupid-simple. You can get a bit more complex with Sequenz and GStomper which wants some cash to do nice things IIRC.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 11:37 AM on January 14, 2016

I like pro metronome, the free version is pretty customizable, a bunch of different samples, ability to mute or accent a beat, make bars from 2 to 16 beats, and from half notes to 32nds. If you know your subdivisions it's trivial to get it to do a two bar clave, with a clave sound as the sample. It's very much a port in progress tho (from iOS), needs a bunch of polish.
posted by disso at 9:38 AM on January 15, 2016

Response by poster: Thanks, everyone!
posted by asok at 5:36 AM on January 21, 2016