Groove Trainer
A drum machine built to practise against — six classic grooves, a step grid to make them yours, and a rhythm trainer that drops the drums out for bars at a time to test your inner clock.
Tap a step to place a hit · tap a drum's name to silence it — try locking to the kick alone.
Space starts and stops · ↑ ↓ nudge by 1 BPM · ← → by 5
How to use it
Pick a groove. Six presets covering the patterns most students actually need — the basic rock pattern with the kick on 1 and 3, funk with its semiquaver (sixteenth-note) hats, a swung jazz ride to play over, bossa, reggae's One Drop and a four-on-the-floor dance pulse. Each one arrives at a sensible tempo with the right amount of swing.
Make it yours. Tap any step to add or remove a hit, and drag the tempo and swing wherever you like. Tap a drum's name to silence that row — which is where the lesson's exercises live: lock one note to the kick alone, play off the snare, follow the hats. The Tom row starts empty on every groove on purpose: drop a little figure into the end of the bar, then answer it on your own instrument.
Test your inner clock. Turn on the rhythm trainer and the band keeps dropping out: some bars play, some bars are silence while the grid keeps sweeping. Hold your line through the gap and listen for the truth when the drums return. It's the same trainer as the metronome's — except now it's a whole kit leaving you alone with your time.
Press play — or hit the space bar. On a phone the screen stays awake while it's running, so it won't doze off mid-practice.
Practice tip
Start on one note — one, whatever you play. Lock a single crotchet to the kick drum and stay there until you can't tell which of you is making the thump. Only then add a second note, and only then a tune. And on the One Drop, let the drums land first: sitting a hair behind that beat-three thud is the whole art of playing in the pocket.
Inner clocks, gap training and why drummers keep better time than the rest of us are what I spend a good part of my lessons on. There is more in the written articles.
This is NOT a full drum machine, nor is it intended to be. Just one adjustable bar with 5 very rudimentary percussion sounds to help get you in the groove.
Keep it in your pocket
The Groove Trainer installs as an app: its own icon on your home screen, full-screen with no browser around it, and — once installed — it works with no signal at all. Practice room, rehearsal cellar, festival field: the band turns up.
To install: look for “Install” or “Add to Home Screen” in your browser’s menu.
Installed — look for the Groove icon on your home screen. This tab is still the website.
You’re in the app
This is the installed Groove Trainer, not the website — it works even with no connection. Everything else — the articles, the other tools, the lessons — lives at tdashton.co.uk.
Now play something over it
A groove is a conversation, and the drums have just said their half. The other half — what to play and why, on whatever you play it on — is what lessons are for. Three of them below; the rest are here.
Also in the free tools: the metronome, the tuner and the interval ear trainer.