How to make a beat on Android with drum pads
You can sketch a beat on a phone without an account or a subscription screen. PlainPads opens on 16 pads. Tap one and it plays. The current beat saves on its own, on the phone.
The steps match the Play listing as of November 2026.
Start from a kit
- Install PlainPads. There is no trial screen and nothing is locked.
- Pick a kit. The eight are Trap, House, Hip-Hop, Dubstep, Drum & Bass, Lo-fi, 808 Machine, and Acoustic. Each kit has a starter beat, which is the fastest way to hear the tempo before you replace it.
- Play the pads. They are multitouch. Each pad has volume, pitch, pan, and a play mode: one-shot, hold, or loop.
- Set the tempo anywhere from 40 to 240 BPM. Tap tempo if you would rather not type a number, and turn on the metronome while you find the pocket.
There are 128 built-in sounds: drums, 808s, basses, chords, bells, risers, and others. They were made for this app. The privacy policy releases them as CC0, so you can use them without a separate license chase.
Sequence, then overdub
The sequencer is 16 steps for every pad, with swing. Program the kick and the hats there if you want them locked, then record yourself playing the rest.
There are four loop tracks. Recording starts at the next bar. Overdub, undo, mute, or clear a track without losing the others. That is enough for a drum loop, a bass pass, and two takes of whatever you play on top.
Effects run at the same time, and you can move them while the beat plays: low-pass, high-pass, and band-pass filter; echo locked to the tempo; reverb; distortion; flanger; and a lo-fi bitcrusher.
Keep a WAV
Record the performance, effects included, as a WAV, or export 1, 2, 4, or 8 bars of the beat as a WAV. Share it or save it on the phone. Saved beats can be renamed or duplicated.
To put your own sound on a pad, import WAV, MP3, M4A, OGG, FLAC, or a similar file, or sample the microphone. The mic permission appears only when you tap Record from mic. You can refuse it and still use every other feature.
PlainPads has no account and no internet permission. If a video of you playing the pads is too quiet, PlainLoud can raise that recording afterwards. PlainPads itself exports audio, not a video of the session.