About GrooveDojo
Build your groove. Own your timing.
GrooveDojo is a free drum practice app that runs in your browser. Write your own groove, import one from sheet music, start from an exercise, or follow a practice plan.
Practice with your electronic drum kit and see whether each hit is early or late as you play, then review the session afterward. No electronic kit? You can still play along with the built-in sounds and metronome.
Why I built it
I’m a hobbyist drummer, and I’m still learning. I take weekly drum lessons, and like many drummers, I’ve struggled with practicing consistently and keeping steady time.
I’m also a software engineer, with a background in computer science and UX design. I started building GrooveDojo for myself, as a way to practice the grooves and exercises I was working on in lessons, loop tricky parts, and better understand my timing.
After a while, I started wondering whether other drummers might find it useful too.
I’m still learning, still practicing, and still improving the tool along the way. I’d love to hear what you think.
Why “Dojo”?
A dojo is a place for practice. GrooveDojo is built around deliberate practice: getting comfortable with drum notation, developing coordination, and improving your timing through repetition and feedback.
Rather than playing along with songs or rhythm-game challenges, it focuses on the fundamentals: slow a pattern down, loop the bars that trip you up, and, with an electronic kit, see how evenly you’re playing. Whether you’ve played for years or are just starting out, the goal isn’t only to get through an exercise. It’s to understand what you’re playing, and build a stronger foundation over time.
What it does
- Write grooves on the grid, with sections, sticking and starters, and read them as drum notation that stays in step with the grid. Hear them on a built-in kit, print them, or import them from sheet music, Groove Scribe links, MusicXML scores and MIDI files (the groove editor).
- Practice with the metronome, loops and a tempo ramp, with or without a kit, using the built-in exercises, the Independence Trainer and your own practice plans (drum practice, practice plans).
- See your timing. With a MIDI kit connected, see which hits were early or late, by how much and on which drum, and review each session (timing feedback, which browsers and kits).
- Keep and share your work in a library in your browser, with backups. Share grooves, folders and practice plans by link, or print them and save them as PDFs, for example for your students (for drum teachers).
Questions? The FAQ answers the common ones.
How it works
Each step has a short clip of the app. Press play to watch it.
1. Write or import a groove
Start with an exercise, write a groove on the grid, or import one from sheet music, Groove Scribe, MusicXML or MIDI. Tap or drag to add notes. For sheet music, check the imported groove against the original before practicing.
No kit needed. Reading sheet music requires an internet connection.
2. Connect your kit
Connect a compatible electronic drum kit through MIDI. GrooveDojo recognizes supported kits automatically, or helps you map the pads by playing them.
No electronic kit? You can still play along with the built-in sounds and metronome.
3. Practice and see your timing
Set your tempo and play along as the groove loops. With a connected kit, timing marks appear directly on the notation, showing early and late hits, missed notes and extra hits.
Live timing feedback requires a connected kit.
4. Review your session
After each session, What to improve shows the notes that kept going wrong, right on the notation. Listen back to how you played them, explore your timing by drum, and compare with your previous session.
Your session history is saved in this browser.
What I care about
- Thoughtful design. I want GrooveDojo to be easy to use from the moment you open it. You should be able to find something to practice and start playing without having to figure out the tool first. I care about the small details too, like letting you stop, change the tempo and try again without ending your practice session.
- Useful feedback. I don’t want to overwhelm you with numbers after every session. I’d rather highlight what went well and what you could work on next, while keeping the detailed results there when you want to dig deeper.
- Privacy and ownership. No account required. Your grooves and practice history are saved in your browser, on your device. They leave it only when you choose, for example when you export a backup or share a link. When you read sheet music online, only the lines you choose are sent. There are no ads or tracking scripts. To understand which features are useful, I collect simple usage counts. They don’t include your grooves, your playing or your results, and you can turn them off anytime (Privacy).
- Performance. Practice tools should feel responsive and stay out of your way. I keep what GrooveDojo loads at startup small, with a size limit that every change is checked against. Other features load only when you need them.
- Accuracy and transparency. I test the timing on my own kit, explain what the numbers mean, and say what hasn’t been tested. I’d rather be clear about the limitations than claim an accuracy I haven’t measured (how timing is measured).
- Free to use. The core practice tools are free, and they’re intended to remain free. The Terms say what that covers.
Keeping it free without cutting corners
I cover GrooveDojo’s running costs myself, so I look for ways to keep them down, as long as they don’t make a tool less useful.
Importing drum notation from a photo or a PDF is one example. GrooveDojo finds the lines of music on your device, and only the lines you choose are sent to Anthropic, whose AI model reads the notes. That costs less than sending the whole page and keeps more of it on your device, and in my tests a single line was also read more accurately.
I didn’t just pick the cheapest model, though. I compared several on my own sheet music, and chose the one that read it best in my tests. If correcting a reading takes longer than writing the groove yourself, the feature isn’t doing its job.
An independent project
GrooveDojo is an independent drum practice project developed and operated by one person in Ontario, Canada. It’s in beta, so expect it to change and improve. Ideas and problem reports are welcome at contact@groovedojo.app. I read every message, though I can’t always reply quickly.
Credits
GrooveDojo uses open-source software and fonts, including Bravura, Instrument Sans and JetBrains Mono, under their licenses. See the third-party notices.