Eight bars. Four minutes. Same tempo for everyone.
A beat battle for two to eight people. Every round rolls one tempo between 60 and 120 BPM and hands it to the whole room, along with 8 empty bars of 4/4. You build alone, hearing nobody else. Then every loop plays back and the room rates it out of five.
Everything you need is already loaded — 7 drum voices and 5 melodic ones. Nothing to install, nothing to download, no samples to go hunting for.
How to playStart a room
Needs an account. Joining doesn't.
Join a room
No sign-up needed.
Ranked match
Queue up with strangers. Everyone gets the same tempo and the same eight bars, the room rates every entry, and you climb a ladder.
Needs an account. 2 players minimum, 8 at most.
Only here to make a beat?
The studio opens on its own. A rolled tempo, 8 bars and the full kit, with no room and nobody to wait for.
No account needed, and nothing is uploaded.
Open the studioA round
Four minutes, start to finish
The same four phases every time, so nobody spends the round learning the round.
- 01
The tempo drops
One number between 60 and 120, rolled fresh and given to everyone in the room. Nobody can change it.
- 02
You build
Four minutes on 8 bars. Drums on the grid, everything else on the piano roll. The clock is the same for all of you.
- 03
Everyone listens
Every entry plays back at the same tempo over the same bars, so nothing wins for being longer or faster.
- 04
The room rates it
Points go up, the ladder moves, and the winning loop can be published to the library.
The kit
Twelve instruments, nothing to download
Everything you need is loaded before the round starts. No sample hunting, no browsing packs while the clock runs.
7 drum voices
Kick, snare, clap, closed and open hats, tom and rim — laid out as a step grid so a pattern takes seconds, not minutes.
5 melodic voices
808, bass, keys, pluck and lead, on a piano roll with zoom, drag and resize. Notes snap to the grid you choose, down to triplets.
Made to be fast
Repeat a bar across the whole loop with one press. Undo everything. Space plays, Enter goes back to the top.
Ranked
A ladder that costs something
Private rooms are for friends. Ranked is for finding out.
Matched against the room
Queue up and get dropped into a public match at your level. Same tempo, same bars, same clock as everyone else in it.
Points you can see
Your points are visible and your rank is on the board. Early on, every match moves you forward. Higher up, a loss starts to cost — which is the promotion, not the punishment.
Library
Loops people actually made
Published from real rounds. Open any of them in the arena and start from there.
Questions
Before you queue
- Do I need to install anything?
- No. GrooveArena runs in the browser. Open a room link and you are in — there is no download and no plugin.
- Do I need an account?
- Not to play. You can join a private room as a guest with just a name. An account is only needed to climb the ranked ladder and publish loops to the library.
- Do I need a DAW?
- No, and that is the main difference between this and every other beat battle. There is no file to render and nothing to upload — the instruments are in the page, and you build the loop in the round itself.
- Do I need to know music theory?
- No. Drums are a grid of on-off cells, which is the whole skill for a lot of great loops. The piano roll is there when you want it, and the built-in kit is tuned so that most things you place will sit together.
- How long is a round?
- Four minutes to produce, every time. The loop itself is 8 bars of 4/4, which runs about 16 seconds at 120 BPM and about 32 seconds at 60.
- Can I choose the tempo?
- No, and that is the point. Every round rolls one tempo between 60 and 120 BPM and hands it to everybody in the room. The contest is what you do with the tempo you were given.
- Is it free?
- Yes. Rooms, ranked and the library are free to play.
The tempo is already rolling.
Open the arena, take four minutes, and see what you do with eight bars you did not choose.
Play free