PlainPads is a drum pad and beat maker that opens on the pads. There is no trial screen, no sign-up, no ads, and nothing locked. Tap a pad and it plays.

The guide is how to make a beat on Android with drum pads. A video of you playing can be made louder afterwards in PlainLoud.

Playing and sequencing

  • 16 pads with multitouch and low-latency sound.
  • 8 kits: Trap, House, Hip-Hop, Dubstep, Drum & Bass, Lo-fi, 808 Machine, and Acoustic.
  • 128 sounds: drums, 808s, basses, chords, bells, risers, and more. The built-in sounds were made for this app. The privacy policy releases them as CC0 (public domain).
  • Per-pad volume, pitch, pan, and play mode (one-shot, hold, or loop).
  • A 16-step sequencer for every pad, with swing, and a starter beat for every kit.
  • Tempo from 40 to 240 BPM, tap tempo, and a metronome.
  • Four loop tracks. Recording starts from the next bar. You can overdub, undo, mute, or clear.

Effects can run together while you play: filter (low-pass, high-pass, band-pass), echo synced to the tempo, reverb, distortion, flanger, and a lo-fi bitcrusher.

Recording and your own sounds

Record a performance, effects included, as a WAV file, or export the beat as 1, 2, 4, or 8 bars of WAV. Share that file to any app or save it on the phone.

Import an audio file onto any pad (WAV, MP3, M4A, OGG, FLAC, and others), or sample the microphone onto a pad. The microphone permission is requested only when you tap Record from mic.

Saved beats can be reopened, renamed, or duplicated. The current beat is saved automatically.

PlainPads has no account and no internet permission. Beats, recordings, and imported sounds stay on the phone.

Get PlainPads on Google Play

On this site

Related apps

  • PlainLoud: Make quiet videos louder. Equalizer, limiter, audio export. No watermark.