Orbeat: Drum Machine

Orbeat is a drum machine in the round. Instead of a grid, your rhythm lives on a glowing mandala — concentric lanes of light that orbit a single play button. Tap the rings, watch the playhead sweep, and feel the groove move.

Built to be played, not programmed. Open it and you're already making beats.

A CIRCULAR SEQUENCER — UP TO TWELVE LANES

Six lanes wrap the screen as rings, and the circle can grow to twelve: the mandala opens a second page of rings in its own electric color set, so every lane keeps its full size. Tap to place hits, lock a lane you love, mute and solo as you build the groove layer by layer. The whole pattern turns as it plays.

FOUR DRUM KITS

Classic, Acoustic, Glitch, and 8-bit — one tap reskins every voice while your pattern stays put. From clean and punchy to broken and chiptune.

BRING YOUR OWN SOUNDS

Build a custom kit and drop your own audio into any lane — WAV, AIFF or mp3, up to ten seconds, played at its original pitch and in stereo. Imported samples run clean to the output, while the lanes you leave alone keep their synth voice, so a hi-hat you recorded yourself sits right next to Orbeat's own drums. Your first custom kit is free.

GENERATORS THAT SURPRISE YOU

Roll the dice for an instant pattern, or use Euclidean rhythms to spread hits evenly around a ring. Like what you hear? Tap the ring to write it in and edit by hand.

MAKE IT BREATHE, MAKE IT DRIFT

Add swing to push the feel off the grid, draw velocity per step for accents that live, and pan each lane across the stereo field. With Probability, hits fire by chance; with polymeter, each lane gets its own length so the phases drift in and out of sync.

TAKE IT ANYWHERE

Bounce any loop to a stereo WAV — named with the beat, its length and its tempo, so it still makes sense in your DAW next month — or run Orbeat as an AUv3 instrument with MIDI in & out — sequence other instruments, or play Orbeat's lanes from your host's piano roll inside GarageBand, AUM, Logic, and other AUv3 hosts. Standalone, play the pads live from any MIDI controller and sync the whole groove to external MIDI clock.

PLAY IN SYNC WITH THE ROOM

Ableton Link keeps Orbeat in time with every Link-enabled app and device on your network — Ableton Live, AUM, Loopy, a friend's iPad across the table. Tempo follows the session, start and stop are shared, and everyone stays in phase. No cables, no setup.

PLAY FREE. UNLOCK ONCE.

The full instrument is free forever — every kit, the six-lane circle, Euclidean generators, swing, velocity, pan, your first custom kit with your own samples, MIDI in & out, and Ableton Link. Orbeat Pro is a single one-time purchase (no subscription, ever) that unlocks room to grow the circle to twelve lanes, plus Probability, polymeter, WAV export, unlimited saved beats, and extra custom kits.

Made for iPhone and iPad. No account, no ads, no tracking — your beats never leave your device unless you share them.

Tap the rings. Make it move.