Beats, a web-based drum machine
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Hello all!I've been an avid fan of Pocket Operators by Teenage Engineering since I found out about them. I even own an EP-133 K.O. II today, which I love.A couple of months ago, Reddit user andiam03 shared a Google Sheet with some drum patterns [1]. I thought it was a very cool way to share and understand beats.During the weekend I coded a basic version of this app I am sharing today. I iterated over it in my free time, and yesterday I felt like I had a pretty good version to share with y'all.It's not meant to be a sequencer but rather a way to experiment with beats and basic sounds, save them, and use them in your songs. It also has a sharing feature with a link.It was built using Tone.js [2], Stimulus [3] and deployed in Render [4] as a static website. I used an LLM to read the Tone.js documentation and generate sounds, since I have no knowledge about sound production, and modified from there.Anyway, hope you like it! I had a blast building it.[0]: https://teenage.engineering[1]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GMRWxEqcZGdBzJg52soe...[2]: https://tonejs.github.io[3]: https://stimulus.hotwired.dev[4]: http://render.com
HN · launched Jan 18, 2026 · 160 upvotes (top 5%) · 0 views
Niche: audio and music production software · 188 launches, 25 in the last 7 days ▼ -24% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Content generation
- Prosumer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 188 launches in audio and music production software →
Could you build this?
Yes Beats is a client-side drum machine and step sequencer leveraging Tone.js for Web Audio synthesis and a simple DOM controller for the step grid.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: KO2 (Teenage Engineering Pocket Operator), ToneJS with Sveltekit, Shantylab, Glicol
Concerns raised: Double tap to zoom interferes with mobile interaction, Beat highlight color (red) invisible on red content, UI complexity challenge while maintaining simplicity
Feature requests: African polyrhythms with swing, humanization, and multiple time signatures, Independent cycle lengths per track, Chiptune piano with different notes, Randomize button, Circular sequencer for looping patterns
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 476 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #24 of 477 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 81 days after the earliest competitor.
- Small Beats · ph · 2026-10-26 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.61
- Audio Player with "Binaural Beats" tuned to the same key as your music · hn · 2026-07-24 · 21 upvotes · similarity 0.60
- Browser based sythesizer, drum machine and squencer · hn · 2026-05-15 · 22 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- Am-1 Arpeggio Machine · hn · 2026-08-14 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- I created instruments for people who have no idea how to play one · hn · 2026-10-21 · 12 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Learn to program a modular synthesizer in the browser · hn · 2026-10-05 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Web-REPL "skred" : my OSS sound engine w/retro C64 appearance · hn · 2026-05-10 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- Web Audio Studio · hn · 2026-03-02 · 64 upvotes · similarity 0.51
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