Pop drum beats

Clean, steady pop grooves with a clear backbeat and a hi-hat you can lock onto. Press Play and the drums keep going until you stop them. Pick a tempo below or set your own anywhere from 50 to 220 BPM.

How a pop drum beat works

Pop drums leave space for the vocal. The pattern repeats with very little variation, so any timing wobble in your own part stands out. That makes a pop groove a good test of whether you can play a simple part in the pocket for three minutes.

How to play along

Keep chords short and rhythmic rather than letting them ring over the whole bar. Match the length of your notes to the hi-hat. Singers can use the kick pattern as the grid for phrasing a verse.

The pop grooves on this page

Billie Jean Pocket is the famously plain eighth-note hat with kick on one and three. Four-on-the-Floor is the dance-pop option with a kick on every beat. Motown Four-on-the-Snare hits the snare on every beat, the way Motown drove a chorus. 60s Girl-Group Beat is Hal Blaine's boom, ba-boom, bap from the Wall of Sound era. Blue-Eyed Soul Groove is a light sixteenth-note pocket for smooth pop. Indie Disco-Rock is the 2000s dance-floor guitar-band beat. Y2K RnB Bounce is the sparse, stuttering late-90s R&B knock. Reggaeton Dembow is the three-three-two snare over a kick on every beat.

Common practice tempos

Start with 80, 90, 100, 110, 120 and 128 BPM. Each tempo has its own page with the right groove already selected, so you can bookmark the one you are working on.