RHYTHM COMPOSER
RETRO BEATBOX
15 VOICE / 16 STEP
STEP WRITE
BASS DRUM
click a key to place a hit · again for accent · again to clear
110TEMPO
A 16-step drum machine with fourteen voices built from oscillators, filters and noise — no samples, no uploads, no account. Program a groove, swing it, mix it, then take it away as a WAV or a link.
Retro Beatbox is a free 16-step drum machine that runs in your browser with no signup and no download. It has fourteen drum voices synthesized live with the Web Audio API in the style of the Roland TR-808, plus swing, three velocity levels, a per-lane mixer, WAV export and shareable beat links.
Yes, completely free. There is no account, no hidden limit, no watermark and no feature gate. Your beats stay on your device unless you choose to share a link or export a WAV.
Click steps in the grid to switch them on, then press Play or hit the space bar. Click a lit step again to cycle it through accent, soft and off. Drag across the grid to paint several steps at once. Start from a preset groove if you want a running beat immediately.
No. Everything runs locally in your browser. There are no servers and no uploads. Your pattern is kept in your own browser storage and in the share link you generate, and nothing else leaves your device beyond anonymous page analytics.
Every voice is synthesized live with oscillators, filters and noise. Nothing is sampled and no audio files are downloaded, which is why the whole drum machine is one HTML file. The cowbell, for example, is built the way the TR-808 built it: two square waves at 540 Hz and 800 Hz through a band-pass filter.
Swing delays every second sixteenth note so the rhythm stops sounding mechanical. At 50 percent the steps are evenly spaced. Push it toward 62 percent for a hip hop shuffle, or toward 66 percent for a hard funk feel.
Yes. Export WAV renders your pattern offline as a 16-bit WAV that loops seamlessly, so you can drop it straight into a DAW, a sampler or a video edit. You choose how many bars to render.
Yes. On a narrow screen the grid becomes a stack of lanes, one card per drum voice, with touch targets sized for a thumb. Every feature including WAV export works the same on mobile as on desktop.
A real TR-808 sells for many thousands of dollars and gives you one instrument in one room. Retro Beatbox recreates the same synthesis approach for free in any browser and adds velocity, a per-lane mixer, four chainable patterns and WAV export. What it does not give you is the analog drift and the physical feel of the original hardware.
Press Share link. Your whole pattern, tempo, swing and mixer settings are packed into the web address, so anyone who opens that link hears exactly what you made. Nothing is stored on a server. For a melody to sit on top of your beat, try Tenori-Online or LiveBeat.