Drums and percussion are the backbone in most of the musical tracks. Choosing the right drums and percussion in music production is crucial and can make the difference in the end. If you do not have the necessary experience to play drums, a drummer friend or money to hire one, then you must use drum sounds from a free drum library or use a free virtual instrument plugin.
Free Funk MIDI Drums Patterns. Free Funk Drum Beats for Download! These MIDI patterns are based on Funk style. Format: Standard MIDI File (.MID) and can be used for practice, for composition and recording. Compatible programs: Any PC or Apple MIDI-compatible music software or hardware sequencer capable of reading standard MIDI files. Starting from a MIDI loop, you can make some variations, add adjacent lines, and the result is amazing. The free MIDI loops presented on our website are suitable for a wide range of styles, including EDM, house, hip-hop, minimal, electro, trap, dubstep and other popular genres. There are tonnes of bass lines, synth melodies, chords, even drum.
We have compiled for you a list with some of the best free drum VST plugins you can find on the Internet. Some of them are more complex for the most advanced and require some knowledge about synthesizing, others are very easy to use and intuitive, but all offers very good drum sounds and can be applied in a wide variety of musical genres. And best of all, they are free!
SL Drums 2 is the newest version of Beatmaker‘s freeware drum VST, AU plugin available for Windows and MAC OS. Featuring over 450 drum samples, 118 new drum kits, new controls and new GUI design, SL Drums 2 is a great virtual drum machine to have into your DAW. Best part…it’s free!
Free Download: SL Drums 2
Impakter is a powerful drum tool and one of the best free drum plugin tested and used by us, featuring over 300 drum samples generated by analogue synths like Korg MS20, Roland Juno60, Kakken SX-150 and drum machines such as Yamaha MR-10, Korg KPR-77, Mattel Synsonics and Antonelli Organ 2377 rhythm box.
Impakter comes with 4 modules for kick, snare, hats and percussion sounds, 52 presets covering a range of sounds and styles plus more.
Compatibility: VST 32-bit plugin format for Windows.
Update: No Link Available
MiniSpillage is a professional quality drum synth plugin featuring 6 oscillators and open Hi-Hat Generator with a noise source and dual resonant filters. Besides this, MiniSpillage also features 3 fully editable drum pads and 3 exclusive AudioSpillage drum synthesis models – BassDrum, WoodDrum and ElectroHiHat. It is very flexible and capable of creating a wide variety of original drum and percussion sounds.
MiniSpillage is a free percussion synthesizer plugin only for Apple Mac OS X music apps.
Free Download: MiniSpillage by AudioSpillage
EXD-80 is a free Drum VST instrument plugin for Windows, featuring 8 drum modules, 4 stereo output pairs (each has its own stereo effects section) and also featuring 128 drum kit patches with 16 preset drum kits. EXD-80 can be used in any EDM music style from Electro, Industrial, Dubstep to Ambient, Bass, Hip Hop and more.
Compatibility: VST 32-bit plugin format for Windows.
Free Download: EXD-80 by Third Harmonic Studios
Drumatic 3 is a great virtual analog drum synthesizer with all sounds completely synthetic: bass drums, snare drums, hand claps, two tom drums, hi-hats, and bells. Uses graphical envelopes for amplitude and modulation, featuring 6 Stereo outputs, assignable for each sound. Drumatic 3 is a simple but effective drum virtual instrument great for any producer or sound designer.
Although the E-Phonic has released a new commercial version, Drumatic 4, the previous version is still available for download and is 100% free.
Compatibility: VST 32-bit plugin format for Windows.
Free Download: Drumatic 3 by E-Phonic
Drum Boxx by SonicXT is another great freeware VST drum synthesizer with which you can create thousands of unique synthetic drum sounds for your musical productions. Drum Boxx features 12 individual signal channels, each with an individual drum synthesizer that can be tweaked, pitched, filtered, equalized, and distorted independently offering an extensive range of sound modulation and drum sound design. Also, 10 custom preset kits/128 user kits are available.
Compatibility: VST 32-bit plugin format for Windows.
Free Download: Drum Boxx Synth by SonicXTC
Drum Pro by Studio Linked is a freeware virtual drum machine designed for Windows and Mac OS and features a collection of 20 drum kits which can be expanded by purchasing new commercial drum expansions from the developer website. The graphical interface has 16 drum pads, and ADSR envelope for the volume and pan controls for each drum pad. Besides this controls, Drum Pro also includes a reverb mix control and a global volume control. You can easily play drum using your MIDI controller and Drum Pro plugin.
Compatibility: VST, AU 32-bit/64-bit plugin format for Windows and Mac OS.
Free Download: Drum Pro by Studio Linked
TS-808 is a VSTi virtual instrument that emulates the legendary drum machine Roland TR-808 and is one of the best plugins of this kind tested by us. Using full schematics for each voice and more parameters this plugin is even an advanced drum machine than his predecessor.
Unfortunately, TS-808 is only available for Windows.
Free Download: TS-808 by Tactile Sounds
MDrummer Small is the little brother of the MDrummer Large, and is one of the most complex and versatile free virtual drum machine plugin from this list. Even this plugin is the “little brother” still lets you create some very good drum sounds and comes with more than 500 MB of samples, multisamples, rhythms and other data.
MDrummer Small also features MIDI Command Method, Integrated Arrangement Sequencer, Jamming Functionality and many other useful features.
Compatibility: VST, AU plugin format for Windows and Mac OS. A standalone version is also available (only for Windows).
Free Download: MDrummer Small by MeldaProduction
Line of Legends is a free drum plugin created by VST4FREE specifically for Hip Hop beat makers, using free drum samples released by RealDrumSamples.com. The GUI is divided in 8 sections: Kick, Snare, Clap, Snap, Toms, Hi-Hat, Ride and Crash, each using its own individual output. Also features punch knobs for attack sculpting and Release, Pan knobs. In total Line of Legends comes with 47 high-quality drum samples.
Compatibility: VST, AU plugin format for Windows and Mac OS
Free Download: Line of Legends by VST4FREE
I think you have already noticed that there are only 9 free drum plugins, not 10. We left this spot open so if you have a recommendation please use the comments section. Depending on your comments we’ll choose the tenth plugin for our list.
We have thought about these plugins:
You might also like to check our list with Best Free VST Synth Plugins of 2015