Orbeat: Drum Machine
Beat maker & sequencer
Free · In-App Purchases · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Set the MIDI note and channel each lane sends — drive any synth or sampler, not just GM drums. Twelve lanes, four kits, MIDI export, Ableton Link. No subscription.
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.
Ratings & Reviews
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SET THE MIDI NOTE EACH LANE SENDS
Every lane now carries its own MIDI note and its own MIDI channel, so Orbeat can drive whatever you point it at — a sampler with its pads mapped some other way, a synth you want to play melodically, six instruments on six channels at once. Until now every lane sent a fixed General MIDI drum note on channel 10: perfect if you were driving a drum machine, and a dead end if you weren't.
You'll find it on a new MIDI tab, per lane. Pick the note — shown as a name and a number together, so it matches whatever your instrument's manual calls it — and pick the channel.
It applies everywhere notes leave: the AUv3 output inside your host, and the MIDI file export. What you hear in the session is what lands in the file. And it works in the other direction too — play a lane's own note from a controller and that lane fires.
Nothing moves unless you move it. Every lane starts on exactly the General MIDI note it has always sent, so existing projects, saved host presets and any hardware you have already mapped keep working untouched. Free for everyone.
Thanks to the player who wrote in about this one — it is the whole update. Tell us what you need next: zhiii0x@gmail.com
The developer, Chih Han Lin, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Provider
- Chih Han Lin
- Size
- 4.7 MB
- Category
- Music
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 16.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 16.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 16.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 13.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- Orbeat Pro USD 11.99
- Copyright
- © Nonotoday LLC
