Free Drum Remover: Make a Drumless Track

What a drum remover does to a song

A drum remover is an AI tool that takes the drum kit out of a finished song and gives you everything else as a drumless track. MuseHub’s drum remover splits the song into six parts (vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano and other instruments) and mixes the five that are not drums back into one stereo WAV file.

The separation model learned from songs whose individual tracks were available, so it knows how a kick, a snare or a ride cymbal sounds inside a full mix. It estimates the drum part from the recording and assigns the rest of the sound to the other five parts.

Older tricks can’t do this. An EQ cut takes the bass along with the kick, because both live in the same low range, and the cymbals share the top end with vocals and guitars. Canceling the center of the stereo image removes the kick and snare, and the vocal and bass go with them.

Which drum sounds separate cleanly

Drums are among the easiest parts for AI separation, because every hit starts with a sharp attack that stands out from sustained instruments. Results still vary across the kit.

For practice, a faint wash or a stray tick rarely matters, because your own kit covers it as soon as you play. It matters more when you record a cover, so listen to the whole drumless track before you start.

Getting the cleanest drumless track

• Start from the best file you have. A WAV or FLAC file keeps the cymbal detail the model uses to tell drums from guitars. A low-bitrate MP3 or a ripped video soundtrack has already blurred some of it.
• Prefer studio recordings to live ones. On stage, the drums reach every microphone, so more of them stays in the other parts. Crowd noise can also be mistaken for cymbals.
• Check what was taken out. Solo the drum row and play it through. If you hear guitar or keys in it, those notes are missing from the drumless track as well.
• Save your files within seven days. Results are kept for a week, so download the drumless track and the drum stem you want to keep.

Drumless tracks you make vs ready-made play-alongs

Drummers have two ways to get a song without drums. Ready-made play-alongs come from publishers, drum education sites and YouTube channels. A drum remover makes one from any song you have as a file.

A practice routine for drumless tracks

A drumless track works best when you learn the part with the record first and then take the drummer away. Each step below removes a little more support.

1. Map the song. Play it with the drums unmuted and note how many bars the intro runs, where the fills fall and where the band stops.
2. Learn the groove from the drum stem. Solo the drum row to hear the kick and snare pattern with no bass or guitar on top of it.
3. Play along with the drums on. Match the recorded drummer first. Any place where the two of you drift apart is a place to work on.
4. Mute the drums and play the whole song. With nobody to lean on, you hear at once when your snare lands ahead of or behind the bass player.
5. Record yourself. Listen back for fills that rush and for grooves that lose energy in the last chorus.

Count-ins and the click

Many songs start with the drummer, either a count on the sticks or a fill into the first bar. With the drums removed, the track can open with silence or with the band coming in cold. Add one or two bars of silence before the start in an audio editor and count yourself in, or let a metronome play a bar at the song’s tempo first.

To find the tempo, tap along on a metronome app that has tap tempo, or count the beats in 15 seconds and multiply by four. A click then helps you check your pulse against the record. Plenty of records were cut without a click and speed up or relax between sections. If the click and the band drift apart, follow the band, since the band is what you hear when you play the track.

Slowing a song down

The tool plays the song at its original speed. To work on a hard fill or a fast song at a lower tempo, download the drumless track and change its tempo in Audacity, which keeps the pitch where it is. Start at around 70–80% of the original tempo and raise it in steps of about 5% as the part settles.

Recording a drum cover over the track

Import the drumless WAV into a DAW or into Audacity, put your drums on a new track and record while you listen on closed headphones. Headphones keep the backing track out of your drum microphones, so the band is not recorded twice.

With an electronic kit, record the kit’s audio output, or record MIDI and choose the drum sounds afterwards. The guide to recording audio in Audacity covers inputs and levels. Recorded tracks can land a few milliseconds late, so zoom in on your first snare hit and line it up with the band if it sits behind.

Mix your kit to sit where the original drums sat. Keep the drum stem on a muted track in the same project and solo it now and then to compare level and brightness, because the rest of the mix was balanced around those drums.

Posting the cover is a separate question from making it. The drumless track is still the original recording, so video platforms can recognize it and claim, monetize or block the upload, depending on the rights holder’s settings.

Learning and transcribing from the drum stem

The drum stem is the kit with nothing else on top. Under a full mix, snare ghost notes, the kick pattern and hi-hat openings are hard to pick out. On their own they are much clearer, which makes the stem useful for learning a part by ear and for writing it down.

1. Loop one section at a time. Download the drum stem and loop four or eight bars in an audio editor. Slow it down if the part is fast.
2. Write the kick and snare first. They carry the groove. Add the hi-hat or ride next, then ghost notes, fills and cymbal accents.
3. Check against the full song. A tom fill or a crash that is unclear in the stem can be easier to place with the band playing.

You can write the part on paper or in notation software. Some programs listen to audio and suggest the notes for you, and the best music transcription software compares the options.

Producers use the stem another way. Playing it next to a drum synth such as ArDrum lets you rebuild a groove from the record with your own sounds, one hit at a time.

Taking out more than the drums

The Download without drums file keeps the vocals, bass, guitar, piano and other instruments. To practice without the singer or the bass player as well, download the stems you want one by one and mix them in an audio editor. The stem splitter gives you the same six parts when you plan to remix the whole song.