What can you recommend for a lightweight Windows program for quick and fun beat making?

So I have my outboard hardware and my offline studio DAW PC (with numerous plugins, samples etc), but it literally takes me at least 15 minutes to fire it all up and get situated before I can even begin laying down ideas.

What I am looking for now is a program I can use on my Win11 12th gen internet PC, which I can open up in seconds and lay down random ideas on the fly. I don't need a full blown DAW with all the bells whistles and huge footprint of plugins, libraries, samples and so on. I will only be using a sample pack I have created myself with my hardware, totaling at most 300mb of one shots. My internet PC has limited reserved space because I mainly use it for artwork, film creation and editing, web work and media stuff. I certainly don't want anything that will attempt to take over my PC or interfere with other essential programs in use.

Anyway, I just want something super simple and fun to quickly sketch out some beats which I can save and import into my studio DAW later on. I guess if not just a single application, it could also be a combo of a super stripped down/low footprint DAW + one low mb's VST plugin geared for beats? I mostly make breaks and house, if that makes any difference.

Free, paid or otherwise suggestions are all welcomed!

 

Last edited by a moderator: Feb 27, 2025

MuLab comes to mind
https://www.mutools.com/mulab-product.html

 

Imaginado BAM, Warmplace SunVox, OpenMPT.

On a slightly heavier "immediate" front Akai MPC, or Native Instruments Maschine, but if you run these you might as well run a full DAW.

 

Hydrogen --> http://hydrogen-music.org/features/

Using Hydrogen Drum Machine With Virtual Drums

Hydrogen Drum Machine for Beginners

 

Huh, now here's a name I've not heard in ages. Shouldn't come as a shock as LMMS still exists, which is not a bad shout for this topic either!

 

SugarBytes Egoist is worth a try.

 

how about just a base DAW without all the extra stuff? a default ableton installation without lots of packs is pretty economically sized, and especially if you make a template of your default workflow, would get you up and running within seconds whenever inspiration strikes

 

How about mobile (android ios) app like flstudio mobile, cubasis or audio evolution (for me the best) ?

 

Well if mobile apps are game then there is Koala Sampler, which also can export sets and recordings to Ableton for further work.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions guys!

I downloaded both Imaginado BAM and Hydrogen to try, but haven't done it yet (see below Maschine experience).

To answer a few questions, I was hoping for a simple standalone beat making program for desktop, so no mobile apps need apply.

I am hesitant about this DAW+1 approach because after watching some videos, I tried Maschine standalone and it was not only not fun, interesting or very intuitive, it installed all kinds of shit on my PC that kept running even when the program was shut off, I also could not get it to work with the stock audio device and my media stereo system instead of my studio interface and monitors, so setting that up each time and switching back and forth was a big PITA. That could have been a Windows thing or NI, not sure Anyway and when I uninstalled and deleted everything system restore took ages to complete, a 3 hour exercise that produced 1 single beat loop I was OK with. So overall not a great experience there

My workflow is usually drag + drop my own samples into the arrangement on separate tracks and then manually put it all together. So maybe something different and interesting, more immediate, to play around with would be best I haven't used many randomizing plugins, usually with VST synths they give horrible results and a waste of time, so I don't know if a drum machine type of program would be any better or not. I guess having the option to randomize some parts could be fun (like top percussions, snare fills etc), but I would still like to use my own samples for the pool it draws from.

-Small footprint (no extra garbage installed always running in background even when shutoff)
-Standalone desktop program (ideally)
-Intuitive easy interface (or useful tooltips popups)
-Interesting and fun to play with (these are supposed to be quick ideas sketched out for future work in my main DAW)
-Allows custom samples
-Has a combo of manual placement + at least a decent randomize function

Whatya guys think?

 

What about these? :

https://www.giadamusic.com/

https://lmms.io/

 

smaolab - M4L HIPHOP Drummer (Analog Sequencer) Standalone
www.kvraudio.com/product/m4l-hiphop-drummer-by-smaolab
https://smaolab.org/m4l-hiphop-drummer/

smaolab - M4L The Drummer (Polyphonic Multi Track Step Sequencer9 Standalone
www.kvraudio.com/product/m4l-the-drummer-by-smaolab
https://smaolab.org/m4l-the-drummer/

Algonaut - Atlas 2 (Drum Sampler Beat Maker Sample Manager) Standalone
www.kvraudio.com/product/atlas-2-by-algonaut
https://algonaut.audio

FXpansion - Geist (Next-generation sampling drum machine) Standalone
FXpansion - Geist 2 (Next-generation sampling drum machine) Standalone
www.kvraudio.com/product/geist2-by-fxpansion
www.fxpansion.com/products/geist2/

Audiomodern - Playbeat 3 (Drum Sequencer) Standalone
www.kvraudio.com/product/playbeat-3-by-audiomodern
https://audiomodern.com/shop/plugins/playbeat-3/

Sound Yeti - Method 1 (Drum Sampler Sequencer) Standalone
www.kvraudio.com/product/method-1-by-sound-yeti
https://soundyeti.com/product/method-1/

Granny's Audio - BeatLines (Step Sequencer) Standalone
www.kvraudio.com/product/beatlines-by-grannys-audio
This domain is pending renewal or has expired.

 

Last edited: Feb 28, 2025

Caustic!

The only thing it won't give you is randomization.

https://archive.org/details/caustic-3.2.0-installer

 

Last edited: Feb 28, 2025

Sugar Bytes Egoist, may give you what you want, check out the video I posted above. It constrains you to 4 tracks. you can load your own samples or use the provided sample sets. You can record the output to a file if you want to manipulate it in Reaper etc. But you can make a fully complete song within Egoist no other DAW required.

Its philosophy is by constraining you to only 4 tracks, you will become more creative. Its a clever bit of software that doesn't load your computer up with a lot of useless shit.


The problem is ..... Once you use it, you will probably become intrigued and want to check out all the Sugar Bytes programs and plugins.

https://sugar-bytes.de/products

 

I think the idea is by limiting functionality and track count, one can speed up production instead of piddling over and over tweaking things. its sort of a digital equivalent of a tascam 4 track portastudio.
you have to commit and move on.

 

reaper. ableton. cubase pro. s1. all light weight

 

the more you know, the more you can do. Egoist is not terribely difficult, you can pickup the basics in 5 minutes.

a better alternative is a hardware recorder with limited tracks like the Zoom R8, 8 tracks simultaneous playback, 2 track simulaneous recording, it is also a USB audio interface. It has a drum machine and sample playback, built in effects like reverb, etc, guitar fx, bass simulator etc, as well as mastering profiles for mixing down your 8 tracks into a nice stereo mix. does wav or mp3. records to sd card which can be copied by plugging it into your usb port on your computer, or simply pulling the sd card and taking it to a computer.

max 32gb sd card, costs about 5$ will hold approx 200 songs in wav format. saves the stems as well as the master mixes, does punch in etc. between 100$ and 200$ one ebay these days.

No windows update, no email, no web browser. just pure focus and its boots up in under 30 seconds so you can get an idea down fast. - has stereo mics built in if you want to capture any acoustic sounds, like voice etc, has phantom power for condensor mics. smaller than a sheet of paper and weights around a pound. I own a couple of them and they helped a lot in developing my guitar techniques and also learning mic'ing, tracking and mixing.


zoom r8 as a drum machine