How do I make a drum loop for free?

Veena is an AI DAW with a personal music producer built in. Describe the song you want and CoProducer builds it with you — beats, chords, melody, arrangement and mix — as real tracks you can edit, mix and export. Free, in your browser. For a loop, click Create MIDI Clip, choose Drum Maker and click hits into the grid, or ask CoProducer for one.

How many bars should a drum loop be?

Four bars suits most genres: long enough for a turnaround in the last bar, short enough to stay hypnotic. House and techno often loop a single bar. In Veena a new drum clip starts at 4 bars, and CoProducer can spread your loop across a whole section with a variation every fourth bar, so bar 16 doesn't sound like bar 1.

What BPM should a drum loop be?

Match the genre: roughly 70 to 90 BPM for lo-fi, 86 to 94 for boom bap, 120 to 126 for house, 130 to 150 for half-time trap and 170 to 176 for drum and bass. In Veena, set any tempo from 40 to 300 BPM in the transport bar, or name the genre and CoProducer sets a suitable tempo on an empty project.

Can I export a drum loop as MIDI?

Yes. In Veena, open the drum clip and click the download icon at the top of its panel, Download MIDI file, to save the loop as a .mid for any drum machine or DAW. Or export the audio from the account menu as a 24-bit, 48 kHz WAV or a 320 kbps MP3, with no watermark and no cap on exports.

Can AI make a drum loop?

Yes. Tell Veena's CoProducer the genre, tempo, kit and feel, such as '4-bar house loop at 124 BPM on TR909, offbeat open hats', and it writes the loop as real MIDI on a drum kit, offering 3 options to pick from. Every hit stays editable in the Beat Maker, so you can move a kick or swap the kit afterwards.

How to Make a Drum Loop: Tempo, Grid, Groove, Export

Here's how to make a drum loop that grooves: set a tempo, lay a kick, snare and hi-hat pattern on a 16-step grid across 1 to 4 bars, shape the velocities, add swing, then give the last bar a turnaround so the loop repeats without a seam. Or describe it to your personal music producer: in Veena, CoProducer builds the loop on a real drum kit, free in your browser.

In Veena's own data, drums are the most-named instrument in first requests after vocals. A drum loop is where most songs start, so it's worth getting the pocket right.

Before you program: tempo and length

Pick the tempo and the loop length before the first hit. They decide everything else.

Style	Tempo	Loop length	What defines it
Boom bap	86–94 BPM	2 or 4 bars	Swung 16ths, ghost snares, a lazy kick
Lo-fi	70–90 BPM	2 or 4 bars	Soft hats, dusty kit, loose timing
House	120–126 BPM	1 or 2 bars	Kick on every beat, open hats on the offbeats
Trap	130–150 BPM, half-time	2 or 4 bars	Snare on beat 3, rolling hats
Drum and bass	170–176 BPM	2 bars	Kick on 1 and the "and" of 3, snare on 2 and 4

Four bars is the sweet spot for most styles. At 90 BPM a 4-bar loop lasts 10.7 seconds; at 124 BPM, 7.7 seconds.

How to make a drum loop, one layer at a time

Here's a 4-bar boom bap loop at 90 BPM, built by hand in Veena's Beat Maker, with the CoProducer request that gets each move in one sentence.

Open the grid

Set 90 BPM in the transport bar. Click Create MIDI Clip, choose Drum Maker, and a 4-bar clip opens in the Beat Maker: 16 steps a bar, four to each beat, with Kick, Snare, Hihat and Hihat Open rows ready. Pick the Jazz kit, or any of Pop, Chaos, JCLive, Brush, Electronic and TR909.

Ask CoProducer: "Make a 4-bar boom bap drum loop at 90 BPM on the Jazz kit." It writes the loop and offers 3 options: hover to hear each, press Enter to add one.

Kick: the anchor

Click steps 1, 8 and 11: beat 1, the "a" of 2 and the "and" of 3. Beat 1 always gets a kick, because it tells the ear where the loop begins. For house, the kick goes on steps 1, 5, 9 and 13 instead.

Snare: the backbeat

Steps 5 and 13, beats 2 and 4. For half-time trap, a single snare on step 9 (beat 3) makes 140 BPM feel like 70.

Hats: the motor

Click every odd step for 8th notes, or drag along the row to paint all 16. In bar 2, move the hat on step 15 to the Hihat Open row for a lift into bar 3. Bar 1 now reads:

Hihat   x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x .
Snare   . . . . x . . . . . . . x . . .
Kick    x . . . . . . x . . x . . . . .
count   1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a

Ask CoProducer: "Keep the kick and snare, make the hats busier in bars 3 and 4."

Velocity: where the groove lives

New hits land at velocity 100 on a 1–127 scale. Drag the offbeat hats down to about 65 so the downbeats lead, and add ghost snares on steps 10 and 16 at 30 to 40. Flat velocities are the main reason programmed drums sound like a machine.

Ask CoProducer: "Accent the hats on the beat and add a few ghost snares."

Swing and feel

Swing pushes every second 16th late. Around 54 to 58 percent is the boom bap pocket, house sits nearer 52 to 56, and techno stays straight at 50. The full ranges are in swing and quantization.

The Beat Maker is a straight 16-step grid, so the feel comes from CoProducer: it edits the notes of your clip in place, and one Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on a Mac) takes it back.

Ask CoProducer: "Swing the 16ths and humanize the hats a little."

The turnaround in bar 4

Four identical bars wear thin by the third pass. Change the last one: drop the kick on beat 4, roll the snare across steps 13 to 16, or open the hat on step 15. The ear hears the change and resets at bar 1.

Ask CoProducer: "Add a short fill in bar 4 that leads back into bar 1."

Make it loop without a seam

Drag across the ruler from bar 1 to bar 5 to loop exactly four bars, press Space, and let it run. Then check four things:

The first hit sits on step 1. A loop that starts on a gap feels late every time it restarts.
Nothing rings over the end. A crash on the last step gets cut off when playback jumps back. Put crashes on bar 1 of the next section instead.
Bar 4 leads home. The fill should resolve into the kick on beat 1.
Levels match end to start. A busier bar 4 is good; a louder one makes the restart jump.

What good sounds like: after thirty seconds you stop hearing where the loop restarts, and your head is still nodding.

Grow it into a song, or take it anywhere

A loop becomes a song when it changes. Ask CoProducer to "spread this loop across 16 bars with a variation every fourth bar", or to "drop the kick for the last two bars before the chorus". For a second layer, see how to layer drums; for genre grooves beyond boom bap, drum patterns explained.

Prefer to start from audio? Ask for "a dusty 90 BPM breakbeat loop" and CoProducer searches 27,356 curated samples plus a licensed professional catalogue, then shows 10 preview cards. Drag a loop's right edge to time-stretch it, or press Match BPM in its Waveform tab.

When the loop is done, export it from the account menu as a 24-bit, 48 kHz WAV or a 320 kbps MP3, the full mix or every track. For MIDI, click the download icon at the top of the clip's panel. Free, with no watermark and no cap.

The free online beat maker opens straight on this grid, and the AI drum generator maps five more grooves by genre, step by step. Can't play drums at all? Read how to make drums when you can't play drums.