A free drum groove editor in your browser

Write drum grooves on a grid, read them as drum notation, and hear them played on a built-in kit.

GrooveDojo runs in your web browser, with nothing to install and no account. Your grooves are saved in your browser as you work.

Write a groove

Writing on the grid

Each drum has its own lane: kick, snare, hi-hat and the hi-hat foot, the toms, ride, crash and cowbell. Click or tap a cell to add a note, or drag to fill several. Brushes add accents, ghost notes and open hi-hats, or erase.

Time signatures. 4/4, 3/4, 6/8, 7/8, 12/8 and others, bar by bar, with the beats grouped the way you count them, such as 7/8 as 2+2+3.
Grids and triplets. Each bar has its own grid, and a beat can be 8th or 16th triplets while the rest of the bar stays straight.
Swing. On 8ths or 16ths, from straight to past a triplet feel.
Sticking. A row of R and L for the hand-played notes.
Sections and repeats. Name sections, repeat a bar, and copy, paste or duplicate notes and bars. Every change can be undone.

Start from an empty groove, one of the starters or the demo groove.

Drag to paint

With a mouse or a pen, drag along a lane to paint a run of notes, such as a bar of hi-hat 16ths in one stroke, or draw a diagonal down the toms for a fill. The brushes add accents, ghost notes and open hi-hats, and Erase wipes what it passes over. On a keyboard, hold Space or Enter and use the arrow keys. On a phone, a swipe scrolls the grid instead, and a tap adds or removes a note.

One stroke paints a bar of hi-hat 16ths, a stroke that starts on a note wipes beat 4, and a diagonal draws a fill down the toms. Press play to watch it.

Reading it as drum notation

The notation is drawn from the grid as you write, so the two always agree. It follows the common drum-set layout, with the kick in the bottom space, the snare in the third space, the hi-hat above the staff and the hi-hat foot below it. Print it as a sheet for a music stand.

Hearing it

Play the groove on the built-in drum sounds, loop it and change its tempo. The metronome clicks on the beats, or on every 8th, 16th or triplet, and Mix sets the volume of the kit and the click.

Bringing grooves in, and sharing them

Import a Groove Scribe link, a MusicXML score (.musicxml or .mxl) or a MIDI file. You see what couldn’t be kept before the groove is saved. Or import it from sheet music (below).
Share a link. The groove travels inside the link, after the “#”, so it isn’t uploaded anywhere. Anyone you send the link to can open it.
Print or save as PDF. Print a groove with its notation, or save it as a PDF from the print dialog.
Export a groove as a MIDI file for other music software, or your library as a GrooveDojo backup file.

Import drum sheet music from a photo or PDF

Have a groove on paper? Bring it into GrooveDojo without writing out every note.

Watch it in a short video on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

In Import groove, under Import from sheet music, use Choose an image or PDF… to pick a photo, a screenshot or a PDF. GrooveDojo finds the lines of music on your device. Pick the line with your groove, and the next line too if it carries on there.

Import groove, with a printed PDF of a practice plan open. Its three lines of music are numbered 1 to 3 down the page, and line 3, a two-bar groove, is chosen and shown larger beside the page. A note says the PDF stays on this device and only the chosen line is sent to Anthropic to read the notes. The buttons are Back, Crop or rotate… and Read line. — The lines of music are found on your device. Only the ones you choose are read online.

Choose Read line. The lines you chose are sent to Anthropic, whose AI model reads the notes, usually in 10 to 20 seconds. Only those lines leave your device (Privacy). Each line of the original is then shown above what was read, bar under bar. If a drum is wrong all the way through, such as a ride read as a hi-hat, choose it and pick the right one, and every one of its notes changes.

Review in editor opens the groove with the original beside it, a bar at a time. Press Play and the original follows along, with the bar you’re hearing outlined, so you can check each bar by eye and by ear, and fix any note on the grid before you save.

The imported groove open in the editor and playing, not yet saved. Its notation shows two bars, with the cursor in bar 2. Below it, Compare with the original shows the line from the PDF with bar 2 outlined, the words Bar 2: Compare it with the original, and the buttons Previous and Next bar. — The groove playing in the editor, with the bar you’re hearing outlined in the original.

Once it’s saved, it’s a groove like any other: loop it, slow it down, practice it in Practice Mode or add it to a practice plan.

Reading can get notes wrong, so compare each bar with the original. It works best on clear printed notation, and it has daily limits (what reads well).

Your library

Grooves are saved in your browser as you work, with folders, search and favorites. They’re kept on this device only, so export a backup now and then (keeping your library safe).

Then practice it

When the groove is written, practice it in Practice Mode with a count-in and loops (drum practice), or make it a step of a practice plan. With an electronic kit connected, see whether each hit is early or late (timing feedback for electronic drums).

Writing exercises for students? For drum teachers shows how to put them in folders or plans and share them.