Comparison

Ensemble Composer vs DrumToolz

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Ensemble Composer

Create custom drumline music with realistic recorded sounds. Compose street beats, stand jams, or entire musical books. Play along, practice, share, and edit your compositions.

Highlights
  • Compose drumline music
  • Realistic recorded drum sounds
  • Play along and practice
  • Share and edit compositions
  • Support for any time signature
  • Customizable rhythms
Features
Currently charting
Read full description

A whole drumline in the palm of your hand! Compose a street beat, a stand jam, or even your whole book. Play along, practice, share, and edit. With amazing real recorded drum sounds and the ability to create any rhythm over any time signature, this is the real deal. Compose and play along with the actual battery drum line sounds of the Paul Rennick 2012 Santa Clara Vanguard, as recorded by bass tech Brian Lowe - tuned the way they sounded on finals night. Best used with Headphones About Telephonic Amusements: Nicholas Wheeler, software engineer, marched Sky Ryders, Velvet Knights, and UNT - taught at Pioneer and UNT; David Croy, designer, marched Sky Ryders and tech’ed under Paul Rennick at Sky, VK, and has provided visual consulting for UNT and Dynasty Drums. Like us at https://www.facebook.com/DrumlineApps

About

DrumToolz

Compose and practice drum cadences and beats on your mobile device. This app allows manual input of exercises, generation of new ideas, and practice of rudiments. Share your creations and learn from a community of drummers.

Highlights
  • Compose drum cadences and beats
  • Manual exercise input
  • Generate new rhythmic ideas
  • Editable music score
  • Practice snare rudiments
  • Library of dynamic exercises
  • Social profile and sharing
Read full description

Compose cadences on the go! Choose from snares, tenors, bass drums, cymbals, and even drumset if you want. In a league of its own, DrumToolz also lets you manually input exercises for drum set, marching snare, tenors, and bass drums while generating new creative ideas using what you input, all shown on an editable music score. You can also upload your beats to your social profile, play what other users are playing, save rhythms, practice snare drum rudiments, and learn from a full library of dynamic exercises for both snare drum and drumset! It's perfect for all skill levels, from beginner to extremely advanced, drum wizards. Works great for sharing drum cadences with your drumline. Isolate individual snare, tenors, etc. parts. Practice the simplest to the most complex of beats and rhythms. If you can think of it, you can input it and practice it! Anything from beginner rock beats, to the most complex of jazz beats and fills. Lastly, top off the notes with ornaments: stickings, accents, flams, diddles, and cheese. Input up to 50 measures. When practicing drum set beats, choose from a ride cymbal, hihat, hihat foot, kick drum, snare drum, and three toms. Input everything from whole notes to thirtysecond notes and tuplets. Also, for tenors, choose from four tenors and a spock. Bass drums - five bass drums. Marching snare - a realistic marching snare and a ping sound. Generate new ideas (modifications) using beats that you input into the score. Choose from several modification methods: Add, Shuffle, Substitute, Permutate, Repeat, and Random. Modify individual parts of the beat (ex: kick drum only) or the entire beat if desired. Custom snare exercises. Choose the time sig, subdivisons, tuplets, stickings, accents, flams, diddles, cheese, drags. Save the beat in the score for later practice, keeping the modifications if desired. If the modifications are kept, this turns the beat into an endless, dynamic exercise! Each time you generate an exercise, it uses the modifications to give you an entirely new beat. String together saved rhythms and practice them as one exercise, perfect for practicing beats followed by a drum fill. Upload your beats to your profile. Find and follow other drummers in the social network. Learn from them as you see and practice what they have uploaded to their profile. Share your beats through PDF links and files. Also, share your entire score with a link that pre-populates the score into the app. Learn from a full library of dynamic drum set and snare drum exercises, essential and hybrid rudiments included. For highlighted rhythms, shuffle around groups of notes, stickings, accents, flams, diddles, and cheese.

Screenshots

Ensemble Composer4 screens
DrumToolz4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: DrumToolz at Free against Ensemble Composer's $14.99. DrumToolz also leads on iOS requirement (14.0 vs 17.6). Ensemble Composer's advantage is rating (4.6 vs 4.2) and review sentiment (77% vs 58%). On ratings volume, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

DrumToolz is free to download; Ensemble Composer costs $14.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Ensemble Composer holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 4.2. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 275 and 270 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 77% of Ensemble Composer's written reviews are positive against 58% of DrumToolz's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Ensemble Composer ships an update every 2 months, DrumToolz monthly. Both last shipped on October 12, 2026.

Scorecard6 real differences · 5 level
Ensemble Composer versus DrumToolz: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterEnsemble ComposerDrumToolz
Price$14.99Free — better
Rating4.6 (275 ratings) — better4.2 (270 ratings)
Positive reviews77.4% of reviews — better58.1% of reviews
Number of ratings275 — better270
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsMonthly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaidFree — better
Best chart rank#182 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS17.614.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size15 MB93 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperN. WheelerJared Simon

Customer experience

Ensemble Composer

All ratings275 ratings
Positive90.5%
Neutral2.2%
Negative7.3%
Written reviews84 reviews
Positive77.4%
Neutral7.1%
Negative15.5%

DrumToolz

All ratings270 ratings
Positive78.1%
Neutral8.5%
Negative13.3%
Written reviews43 reviews
Positive58.1%
Neutral25.6%
Negative16.3%

User reviews

Ensemble Composer

From 275 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🎵 Authentic drum sounds and audio quality (older versions)
  • ✍️ Intuitive composition interface for writing cadences
  • 📱 All-in-one drumline app combining multiple sections
  • 💾 Export functionality to sheet music and audio formats
  • 🎯 Useful for educators and students to practice rhythms

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Severe audio quality degradation after recent update
  • 🐛 Choppy scrolling and laggy performance
  • 🐛 Audio stuttering and cutting off during playback
  • 🐛 Files not saving or disappearing after updates
  • 🐛 Backward compatibility issues with legacy files

DrumToolz

From 270 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 👍 Great for writing music
  • 👍 Helpful for drumline
  • 👍 Easy to use
  • 👍 Good sounds
  • 👍 Good for practice

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Tutorial not helpful
  • 🐛 Hard to find features
  • 🐛 UI issues
  • 🐛 App crashes frequently
  • 🐛 Saves progress poorly

Bugs and requests

Ensemble Composer

Reported bugs

16 issues
  • New update prevents opening older files
  • Audio stutters and cuts off in faster rhythms
  • Triplet rolls don't sound even
  • Bass drum subdivisions not working
  • Tenor section drums moved to incorrect positions
Show 11 more
  • Scroll feature is choppy and laggy
  • Rhythmic accuracy issues
  • Cymbal sounds bleed into each other
  • App crashes with certain subdivisions
  • Polyrhythm and odd time signature issues
  • Saving functionality fails intermittently
  • Split feature freezes and causes progress loss
  • Files duplicate unexpectedly
  • Export format incorrect (.mxl instead of .xml)
  • Tempo synchronization issues
  • App crashes on startup

Requested features

16 requests
  • Revert snare sounds to pre-update quality
  • Multiple sound option choices for drums
  • Hi-hat option for cymbals
  • Single tenor drum section option
  • Separate tempos within drum sections
Show 11 more
  • Undo/redo functionality
  • Auto-save feature
  • iCloud or cloud backup support
  • Different drum tuning options
  • Legato and staccato buzz options
  • Smoother and longer buzz roll sounds
  • Sixtet tenor configuration option
  • Video export/share functionality
  • In-depth tutorial documentation
  • Accent dynamics improvements
  • Rim click sounds for tenors

DrumToolz

Reported bugs

13 issues
  • App crashes and deletes progress
  • App won't open
  • Repeat function doesn't stop
  • Repeat save fails
  • Accents, diddles, flams added automatically
Show 8 more
  • Buzz roll cannot be removed
  • Font camouflages in dark mode
  • App crashes when opening after saving
  • App crashes when opening
  • App crashes when adding notes
  • App crashes after saving
  • App crashes when trying to reopen
  • App crashes a lot

Requested features

15 requests
  • Turn off metronome
  • Add rum shot for snare
  • Add rim shots for other drums
  • Add triplets, fivelets, sixlets
  • Add dynamics (forte, piano)
Show 10 more
  • Cymbals sizzle option
  • Add buzz roll for snares
  • Add diddle feature
  • More measures
  • Add bass drum notes
  • Add open hi-hat sound
  • Improve UI for tuplet measurement
  • Improve UI for measure change
  • Ability to hear multiple instruments simultaneously
  • Fix replace button for bass drums

In-app purchases

None

Ensemble Composer

No in-app purchases

None

DrumToolz

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Ensemble Composer free?
Ensemble Composer costs $14.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is DrumToolz free?
DrumToolz is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Ensemble Composer or DrumToolz?
Ensemble Composer is rated higher. Ensemble Composer averages 4.6 out of 5 from 275 ratings, while DrumToolz averages 4.2 from 270 ratings.
Do Ensemble Composer or DrumToolz have ads?
Neither Ensemble Composer nor DrumToolz shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Ensemble Composer or DrumToolz?
Ensemble Composer ships an update every 2 months, and DrumToolz monthly. Most recently, Ensemble Composer was updated on October 12, 2026 and DrumToolz on October 12, 2026.

Other comparisons