What it is
DrumScribe takes a YouTube link and gives you back the song's drum part as importable notation: a MIDI file, a plain-text drum tab, and an interactive in-browser player you can slow down to learn the groove. No software to install; it runs in your browser, and it's free to try.
It's for drummers learning songs by ear, teachers building charts, and anyone who wants a readable starting point for a drum part instead of transcribing every hit by hand.
How it works under the hood
When you paste a link, DrumScribe pulls the audio and runs it through a short pipeline:
- Drum transcription: an AI model trained on real full mixes listens to the whole song (no source separation) and detects the kit: kick, snare, hi-hats, toms, and cymbals.
- Tempo & beat tracking: a separate beat tracker finds the pulse and a within-song tempo map, so the notation lines up even when the tempo drifts.
- Quantize & feel: hits are snapped to a musical grid, with triplet / 16th / 32nd subdivisions detected per beat and best-effort 3/4-vs-4/4 meter.
- Export: the result becomes General-MIDI drums (channel 10) you can open in MuseScore or your DAW, a plain-text tab, and a printable PDF.
The transcription engine is self-hosted and open-source-based: it's our own pipeline, not a third-party transcription API.
How accurate is it?
Honestly: it's a best-effort draft, not ground truth. Think of it as a strong starting point you refine in notation software, not a perfect chart.
What's reliable
Kick and snare timing on steady grooves: the backbone of most parts.
What's approximate
Toms and cymbal types (ride vs. crash vs. china), busy hi-hat patterns, drum fills, and double-kick precision. Ghost notes, flams, and dynamics aren't captured. Tempo can occasionally lock to half/double, and unusual or changing meters are assumed, not detected.
That's why everything is editable: open the MIDI in any notation editor and fix what your ears tell you.
The legal bit
Downloading audio from YouTube may violate YouTube's Terms of Service. You are responsible for ensuring you have the right to process any given video.
DrumScribe performs no DRM circumvention. It's a transcription tool, not a way around content protection, so please use it only with material you're allowed to.
Who's behind it & contact
DrumScribe is an independent project. Questions, bug reports, or a wildly-wrong transcription you want to share? Get in touch:
Ready to chart a song?
Free to try. A strong starting point you refine, not a perfect chart.
Open DrumScribe