Punk drum patterns.

6 punk patterns at 180 BPM. Play one, change any step, take it to your DAW as MIDI.

Punk is the basic rock beat played as fast as the drummer can hold it. Kick on one and three, snare on two and four, hats in eighths, at 180 instead of 120, and the crash ride instead of the hat when it needs to be louder. The sub-styles are small changes to that: a kick on every beat for skate punk, the d-beat's displaced snare, the open hat of pop punk, and the half-time breakdown hardcore drops into.

Basic. Kick on one and three, snare on two and four, hats in eighths at 180.

Hat
Snare
Kick

Drop a sound on any row to play it there.

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Skate punk. At 200, kick on every beat and the snare on two and four: the fastest the simple beat goes.

Hat
Snare
Kick

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D-beat. Kick on one and the and of two, snare on two, the and of three and four: one common reading of the pattern.

Crash
Snare
Kick

Drop a sound on any row to play it there.

Open in the drum sequencer →

Pop punk, open hats. Kick on one and the and of three, open hat on the offbeats, crash on one.

Crash
Open hat
Hat
Snare
Kick

Drop a sound on any row to play it there.

Open in the drum sequencer →

Hardcore breakdown. Half-time at 140: snare on three, kick on one and the a of three, China-style crash on the beats.

Crash
Snare
Kick

Drop a sound on any row to play it there.

Open in the drum sequencer →

Two bars with a snare fill. Bar two ends in a beat of snare sixteenths and a crash on the next one.

Crash
Hat
Snare
Kick

Drop a sound on any row to play it there.

Open in the drum sequencer →

How a punk beat is built

The kick

The snare on two and four

Hats in eighths

Then a variation: Skate punk

Kick on steps 1 and 9, snare on 5 and 13, hats on the eighths, 180 BPM, no swing: that is most of punk. Skate punk puts kicks on every beat, steps 1, 5, 9 and 13, at 200, which is as fast as the simple beat goes before it turns into a blast. The d-beat, in one common reading, has the kick on step 1 and the and of two (step 7), repeated in the second half, and the snare on two, the and of three and four, played on the crash; readings differ, so treat it as a start. Pop punk slows to 170 and opens the hat on the offbeats with a crash on one. The hardcore breakdown is half-time at 140 with the snare on step 9 and a crash on every beat. The two-bar pattern ends in a beat of snare sixteenths into the crash.

More drum patterns

The beat you want is in a song you’re playing.

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Questions.

What tempo is punk?

160 to 200 BPM for most of it, with the grid at 180. Pop punk sits at 160 to 175, hardcore at 180 to 220, and breakdowns drop to half-time around 130 to 150.

What is a d-beat?

A fast pattern from early eighties hardcore where the snare is displaced from the plain backbeat and the kick answers it. Transcriptions disagree on the details, so this page gives one common reading and says so; move the snares until it sounds like the records you mean.

Hats or crash?

Hats for the verse, crash ride for the chorus. Punk drummers ride the crash for whole sections because it's louder; on the grid, swap the hat row for the crash row and lower its level.

More free tools

All free tools →

Drum sequencer

Program a beat on a 16-step grid.

Drum pad

16 pads on your keyboard, your own sounds too.

Metronome

A steady click, and a click track to download.