Drum Kit Splitter

How to split the drums in a song

1. Upload the song. MP3, WAV, M4A or FLAC, up to 10 minutes. You sign in with Google the first time.
2. Press Split the song. The price is 1 credit for every minute of music, and the button shows it before anything runs. New accounts start with 5 credits, enough for one song up to 5 minutes. Most songs take 1 to 3 minutes.
3. Listen row by row. The console shows eight rows. Switch each on or off, listen alone or together, and download what you need as MP3 files at 320 kbps. If processing fails, your credits are returned.

The eight rows

• Drums (full). The whole kit as one file, before it is split.
• Kick. The bass drum: the low thump on the beat.
• Snare. The crack on beats two and four in most pop and rock.
• Toms. Fills and rolls around the kit.
• Hi-hat. The ticking pattern, open and closed.
• Ride. The sustained cymbal used for a steady pulse, common in jazz.
• Crash. The big accent cymbal at the start of a section.
• Residual. What was left over after the other drum rows were taken out.

Who uses it

Producers take a real kick or snare from a song to layer under their own samples, or mute the original kick and put a new one in. A kick on its own is also a handy reference for the level you want in your own mix.

Drummers learn a part by listening to one piece at a time. Isolate the hi-hat to hear whether the pattern is straight eighths or sixteenths, or isolate the toms to copy a fill.

Mix engineers and students use the rows to see how a record balances the kit.

Before you rely on it

The model splits the drums into kick, snare, toms and cymbals, and the three cymbals (hi-hat, ride, crash) are the hardest to tell apart, so a crash can leak into the ride row and the other way round. Hi-hat that plays quietly under loud guitars may be faint. Electronic drum machines with layered samples can split less cleanly than a live kit. As with any separation, a very dense or live recording can leave traces of the drums in the wrong row.

If you only want the drums removed or kept as one file, the Drum Remover is a simpler page. For a full split of the song into vocals, bass and the rest, start at the home page. For strings, wind and lead vocals along with the drum pieces, see the 7-Stem Splitter. Shakers, congas and other hand percussion are on the Percussion Extractor.