Dragon Drum Machine

4.5
170 reviews
10K+
Downloads
Content rating
Everyone
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About this app

Dragon is a drum machine built to quickly and easily make glitch, distorted, lofi drum beats and manipulate them live. The drums are simple and flexible, capable of some classic drum machine sounds and also new weirdness. Each is synthesized in real time and sent to a multi effect rig with variable speed stutter, bit reduction, pitched feedback delay, down-sample, reverb, and a resonant bandpass filter. The drums are triggered by a four pattern step sequencer. Patterns can be changed individually for each drum or triggered together for quick pattern switches for all drums.

Features:
Four pattern sequencer with local and global pattern control
BPM control with nudging
Save/load presets
Record audio as wav
Three drum synths:
-Bass-similar to tr-808 with more consistent pitch
-Snare-similar to tr-909 with added fm and delay
-Hi-hat-two tones and noise with fm
Effects rig:
-Asymmetry and tanh(x) for tape like distortion
-Pitched feedback delay
-Retrigger (aka stutter/buffer) with variable speed and reversing
-Bit reduction
-Down-sample
-Reverb
-Resonant bandpass filter

Preset management and wav export requires permission for file storage read/write

Unpaid version disables preset saving and audio recording

Possible future ports to desktop and ios. Made with Pure Data and libGDX. Any questions, concerns, or creations, please contact

Full parameter and effect reference:

SYNTH PARAMETERS

Bass drum-
Freq: Frequency. Locks into semitones so you can harmonize easily
Decay: Amplitude decay
Freq Env Dec: Frequency envelope decay. Changes how fast the pitch drops
Freq Env Amt: Frequency envelope amount. Changes how much the pitch drops
Noise: Noise burst for click
Amp: Bass drum amp

Snare drum-
Tone Low Dec: Tone low decay
Tone High Dec: Tone high decay
Noise Dec: Noise decay
FM: Frequency modulate the low tone by the high tone
Freq: Frequency. Locks into semitones so you an harmonize easily, though fm and the high tone potentially bring inharmonic tones
Freq Env: Frequency envelope. Changes how much the pitch drops
Delay: Feedback delay
Delay ms: Milliseconds of delay
Tone Distance: Distance between low and high tones
Amp: Volume of snare

Hi-Hat-
Freq: Frequency
FM: Frequency modulate the tone
Tone Dec: Tone decay
Tone Amp: Tone amplitude
Noise Dec: Noise decay
Noise Amp: Tone amplitude

EFFECTS

Retrig: Loop audio by the specified time interval (bottom box) within the range of another time interval (top box)
Rev: reverse retrigger’s playback
Speed: control the speed of the retrigger’s playback

Bit Red: Bit reducer. Mixes in a low bit signal
BP Filt: Band-pass filter. All the way left is off
Tanh: Amplifies and the waveshapes the signal through a hyperbolic tangent curve. Creates a tape-like distortion
Asym: Adds to the signal, creating a DC offset. Needs Tanh turned a bit for a significant effect
Down Samp: Down-sample the signal
Reverb: Mixes in reverb signal
Delay: Pitched feedback delay dry/wet
Delay ms: Milliseconds of delay
Freq: Adjust the pitch that the delayed signal is adjusted by. Also locks into semitones (0-12)
Updated on
Oct 26, 2023

Data safety

Safety starts with understanding how developers collect and share your data. Data privacy and security practices may vary based on your use, region, and age. The developer provided this information and may update it over time.
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Ratings and reviews

4.5
154 reviews
A Google user
October 24, 2018
So dirty I had to take a bath afterwards. Pretty sweet little machine, very simple and intuitive to use. Would definitely not call it lo-fi, sounds pretty industrial, but it was what I expected from the demos. Would LOVE a clap...I love the simplicity but I think it could do with a clap to complete the set...maybe a Tom as well, but thats might be too much. Also it would be great to have individual FX, and not just master. But overall fun app, sounds very nice, pretty good individual controls. Simple to use. You'll probably want to sample it out to be able to create a more complete kit, but it's producing some gritty deep bass. Hats off dev, would love to hear more from you.
19 people found this review helpful
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Akunull Systems
December 12, 2018
Appreciate the detailed review. I like the clap suggestion, that's where I'm headed but I might keep this app with three instruments to keep a similar cpu efficiency for older devices. More indiv fx will be worked in though as I can retain more efficiency. Gonna have clap in an upcoming app. Thanks again for the review, any more fdbk please email.
Harold Geiser
August 6, 2023
I would love to see this app get more updates, it's very intuitive and I enjoy using it. My main suggestion would be to add reverb and delay for all instruments, and also some kind of indication that a step isn't being played, for example if the length of a sequence was six beats, making the grid six tiles wide.
1 person found this review helpful
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Akunull Systems
September 2, 2023
Greatly appreciate the review and feedback. I have something similar or the same as your effects suggestion for another upcoming app, and probably same thing with the step length/count visual feedback. It might not be too hard to translate it over to dragon. Thanks again
Dog Foo (Dogfood)
November 28, 2023
Very heavy industrial drum machine with a sonic range that can be very difficult to find in other apps with such a seamless user experience as this one! It's fully fledged and makes the production of noisy drum patterns seamless. Great for layering.
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What's new

Update Android API to 33