Ensemble Composer vs Drumline Designer
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- Compose drumline music
- Realistic recorded drum sounds
- Play along and practice
- Share and edit compositions
- Support for any time signature
- Customizable rhythms
Read full descriptionHide 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
Drumline Designer
Create and edit drumline sheet music directly on your mobile device. This app offers an intuitive grid system for note entry, automatic beaming, and support for complex rhythms and articulations. Export your compositions as PDFs, audio, MusicXML, or animated videos.
- Intuitive grid-based note entry
- Automatic beaming and placement
- Support for tuplets and complex rhythms
- Add accents, staccatos, marcatos, and legatos
- Instant playback for review
- Export to PDF, Audio, MusicXML, and video
- Create animated video clips
Read full descriptionHide full description
Notate sheet music for drumline directly from your phone! Drumline Designer is the app that lets you easily enter notes into a grid and have your sheet music automatically be created. Perfect for hobbyist and professionals! Export PDFs, Audio, MusicXML, and videos of your music! Drumline Designer uses an accessible grid design system, allowing you input notes easily. Each note is automatically beamed and placed inside of your sheet music. The grid can also work with tuplets, allowing you to write more complex rhythmic lines. Add accents, staccatos, marcatos, and legatos to your music, shaping the way everything plays and sounds. Playback is instant, allowing you to listen and make changes as you go. Each piece of music can be exported to other notation softwares, allowing you to easily implement your drumline music into Sibelius, MuseScore, Dorico and other notation software! Show off your music by exporting animated videos, making both portrait and landscape clips so you can share your work on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and other social media.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Ensemble Composer at 4.6 against Drumline Designer's 4.0. Ensemble Composer also leads on ratings volume (275 vs 2) and price ($14.99 vs $19.99). Drumline Designer's advantage is update cadence (every 6 days vs every 2 months) and review sentiment (100% vs 77%). On ads, in-app purchases, monetization model and chart position 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
Ensemble Composer costs $14.99 and Drumline Designer $19.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Ensemble Composer holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 4.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Ensemble Composer has 275 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 77% of Ensemble Composer's written reviews are positive against 100% of Drumline Designer's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Ensemble Composer ships an update every 2 months, Drumline Designer every 6 days. Both last shipped on October 15, 2026.
| Parameter | Ensemble Composer | Drumline Designer |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $14.99 — better | $19.99 |
| Rating | 4.6 (275 ratings) — better | 4.0 (2 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 77.4% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 275 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 6 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Best chart rank | #181 | #178 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.6 | 14.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 15 MB | 213 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | N. Wheeler | Christian Price |
Customer experience
Ensemble Composer
Drumline Designer
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 moreShow fewer
- 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 moreShow fewer
- 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
Drumline Designer
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Ensemble Composer
No in-app purchases
Drumline Designer
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Ensemble Composer free?
Is Drumline Designer free?
Which has better reviews, Ensemble Composer or Drumline Designer?
Do Ensemble Composer or Drumline Designer have ads?
Which is updated more often, Ensemble Composer or Drumline Designer?
Which is more popular, Ensemble Composer or Drumline Designer?
Other comparisons















