How-to guide
How to create a drumless practice track
The best practice material for a drummer is the songs you actually want to play. Commercial drumless backing tracks cover only a small catalogue, so making your own from any recording is the practical route. This guide covers how to make one with DrumSplit, and how to set up a practice routine around it.
What you will have at the end
A "Music" WAV file: the song with the drums taken out, with bass, guitars, keys and vocals kept. Alongside it you also get the drums on their own (DrumBus) and each kit piece separately (Kick, Snare, HiHats, Toms, Cymbals). That second part matters for practice, as covered below.
Step by step
- Choose the song and the best version of it. Use a lossless file or a high-bitrate MP3. Avoid recordings ripped from low-quality video, which hand the model blurry cymbals to untangle. Tracks must be 100 MB or less and 8 minutes or shorter.
- Upload at drumsplit.io. No account is needed to pay for a split.
- Pick Natural for most songs. It is the general-purpose mode for live and acoustic kits. Puncher is aimed at EDM, hip-hop and pop with compressed drums.
- Pay. $0.99 for one split, or buy a pack if you are building a setlist: 10 for $4.99, 50 for $14.99, 150 for $29.99. No subscription, and purchased credits never expire. There is no free split on the site right now.
- Download the ZIP within 24 hours and take the Music file.
- Load it where you practice. Your DAW, a phone music player or a practice app all work. Many drummers like a looper or a tempo-change tool so they can slow a hard fill.
Set up the session
Check the file before you rely on it. Play the whole Music file once with headphones. Listen in the sections where the drums were loudest. Faint cymbal tails or a slight "ghost" of the snare mean you will hear a little of the original under your playing. For practice this is usually fine. It can matter if you are recording a cover.
Keep a reference. Do not delete the original. When something in your playing feels off, switch between the original and the drumless file to hear what the drummer actually did.
Use the individual stems to learn. If you cannot work out what the hi-hat is doing in the chorus, play the HiHats stem on its own. Then play the Snare stem. Learning one limb at a time from the isolated parts is often faster than trying to hear everything in the mix.
Slow down, then speed up. Use a tempo tool to take a hard section to a comfortable speed. Moving back to full speed in small steps is more reliable than jumping straight to tempo. Pitch-preserving time stretch can add its own artifacts, so judge the slowed audio by feel, not by sound quality.
Set a click. If the original drummer pushed or dragged the tempo, a drumless track will wander against a fixed metronome. Either practice with the track alone, or tap tempo section by section.
Build a setlist in one go. If you are preparing for a band rehearsal or an audition, upload the songs in a batch (the site allows up to 10 files) so you can practice from one folder.
What it cannot do
- No chart or notation. It gives you audio, not drum notes.
- Not always perfectly clean. Dense, loud mixes and heavy room reverb can leave faint drum remnants.
- Sampled or synthetic drums mixed with other parts can take small pieces of other instruments with them.
- Old recordings. Mono mixes, tape hiss and drums that bleed into every microphone are harder to separate cleanly.
- Session feel. A drumless file has no room tone from the kit, so it may feel emptier than a real backing track made in a studio.
How it compares
- Premade drumless tracks sound cleanest, because they were made from the multitrack, but you are limited to what exists.
- Moises is a full practice app on phone and desktop with tempo and looping. It is subscription based, so check its current plans before committing. Its drum separation includes individual kit pieces on its Pro plan, according to its own site.
- Demucs is free and runs on your computer. It takes setup and gives you one combined drum stem.
- DrumSplit is a one-off per-song payment, with a drumless file and kit stems. It does not have tempo, loop or chord tools, so pair it with a player or DAW for slowdown and looping.
FAQ
Can I practice with it on my phone? Yes. The Music file is a normal WAV. Copy it to your phone and play it in any music or practice app. You can also convert it to MP3 to save space.
Why does the track sound a bit hollow in places? A few frequencies are shared between drums and other instruments. When the drums are removed, a little of the other instruments can come with them. Natural mode is usually the gentlest.
Do I need an account? Not to buy a split. An account adds a My Splits library.
Can I make a track for a song with a drum machine? Yes. Try Puncher mode first for compressed, programmed drums.
Is it free? No. Pricing is $0.99 per song or less in packs.
Can I share the drumless track? For private practice, fine. Posting or selling it needs the rights holder's permission.
Try DrumSplit
Upload a song to the drum splitter & drum stem separator and get 7 files: kick, snare, hi-hats, toms, cymbals, a drum bus and the music without drums. From $0.99 per split. No subscription. Purchased credits never expire.
Try DrumSplit