Drum notation for a touchscreen
Tating is a drum notation editor built for a touchscreen and for drummers. Tap a groove onto the grid, hear it played back with real sounds, and read it as proper notation. No account, no sign-in, and no signal needed.
Free to try on Android and iPhone/iPad. One purchase unlocks everything. No subscription, no adverts, no analytics.
Built for fingers
Tap a cell to place a note. Press, hold and drag to paint a run of them. Flick up from a cell for that row's second sound — the open hat under the closed one, the ghost note under the backbeat. Press and hold a note for that drum's other sounds, with the full list one tap further.
A drummer's vocabulary is all there: ghost notes, accents, flams, drags, buzz strokes, cross stick, open, closed and tight hi-hats, hi-hat with the foot, ride and ride bell. Stickings go under the staff and can be tapped in on a row of their own. Hand percussion too — congas, bongos, djembe, clave, woodblocks, shaker, tambourine — playable from the tom rows.
Practice properly
A counter tells you which bar you're on and how long you've played.
PocketCheck
Play the groove on a real kit while your phone listens, and see where every hit sat against the beat. It measures the speaker-to-microphone round trip first, so the reading is honest. It reports placement rather than marking you: sitting behind the beat is a feel, and what matters is how tight the cloud is.
The microphone is used only while this screen is open. Nothing is recorded, saved or sent — the sound is analysed on the phone as it arrives and is gone. Only the timings are kept.
Keep it, share it, move it on
Save grooves to a library with search, tags and favourites. Send a groove to another drummer as a link they can open straight into Tating, and open the links they send you. Import MIDI on the standard drum map, and export it so grooves move out to a DAW. Export the notation as a PDF for the music stand.
Gig charts write the song down as its form — intro, verse, chorus, the repeats and the road map — beside your grooves. Point any drum at a recording of your own kit. Light or dark, and a choice of accent colours.
Time signatures from 4/4 to 7/8, 9/16 and 13/16, on straight or triplet grids, quarter notes down to 32nds. Odd meters are beamed and counted the way drummers group them, not the way a spreadsheet would.
Noteheads, stems, beams, cross noteheads for cymbals, stems up for hands and down for feet. The grid is for writing; the staff is for reading while you play.
Android · iPhone · iPad
No subscription and nothing that phones home. Your grooves live on your phone; the only thing that ever talks to a server is the purchase itself, and that goes through Google Play or the App Store.
Tating