So you think music production is pretty cool and think you might want to try it out? Here’s a list of sites where you can quickly (5 mins of playing around) and easily get a taste of production. Most of these are flash based, and all of them run in the web page, so there’s no download necessary. Playing with these will give you a pretty good feel of how you program drums in software like Reason and Fruity Loops and even get you familiar with hardware machines since these try to mimic the original machines. All links open in new window.

If you are just looking for a tutorial on how to make a beat, see how to make a simple hip hop drum beat in 30 min.

aM Laboratory TR-909 Emulator – Flash based drum machine that emulates the Roland TR-90 drum machine.

Beaterator by Rockstar Games – A very impressive online flash-based beat making machine by Rockstar Games. This not only does drums, but you can upload your own sounds and use them in your beat. A little confusing at first if you’ve never dealt with sequencers. Definitely a must try.

Tiny Drum Machine – no real drum sounds involved in this, but a great sequencer experiment with awesome visualizations.

Hexadecimal Drum Machine – drum machine with 3 drum kits and 4 presets.

Monkey Machine Online Java Drum Machine – a Java based web page drum machine. No download necessary. Pretty simple with 10 drums, pattern control, speed control, and different style presets.

zefrank.com Sequencer – not as user friendly as the others because it simulates a “recording” mode where you click in the drums as the loop is playing. Gives you an idea of what recording drums is like in a sequencer. You can load loops that other visitors have saved.

Groovelab – simple online drum machine with 47 drum samples and 3 effects. Allows downloading as .WAV files.

Geneffects -another very simple online drum machine.

Transjam WebDrum II – a live multi-player drum machine. It has horrible drum samples, but fun to play with.

Virtual Drum Machine Playground – a huge collection of simulated drum machines from the 60’s through 80’s.

Worst Drummachine by drx – a VERY simple web page drum machine. Not even flash-based. Just click in the radio buttons to program the drums. Not the best, but gets you introduced to drum machines.