Ensemble Composer vs Drumr Notate
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
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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
Drumr Notate
Create, listen to, and share drum sheet music with this intuitive notation software. Features include a vast library of drum sounds, advanced notation tools, and performance analysis for practice.
- Intuitive note placement with drag-and-drop
- Playback with realistic drum sounds
- Extensive notation options for various drum types
- Performance analysis for practice
- Export to MusicXML and PDF
- Customizable appearance themes
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Notation software made exclusively for drums. Write a groove, work out a fill, or build a part for the line. Write it. Hear it. Share it. Made for speed Drag a note over the score to see where it fits before you drop it. You can also tap notes into place or use keyboard shortcuts. Repeat notes, duplicate measures, and copy and paste to build the part fast. Notate handles beams and rests as you write. Hear it back Hit play to hear your part, accents and ghost notes included. Built-in drum sounds follow your tempo marks from 30 to 300 bpm, with a metronome to keep the beat. Everything you need to compose. - Note values from whole notes to 32nd notes - Tuplets — triplets, quintuplets, sextuplets, septuplets, and ninelets - Dynamics from ppp to fff, crescendo and decrescendo hairpins, and score-wide Accent/Tap dynamics - Accents, marcatos, tenutos, staccatos, flams, drags, ruffs, diddles, ghost notes, and open hi-hat markings - Add sticking and text to explain how the part should be played, or show sticking with Berger notation on Marching Snare - Per-measure tempo marks from 30 to 300 bpm and time signatures from 2/4 to 13/8 - Beams group themselves from the meter, compound meters included, with manual override - Rests consolidate automatically Built for the whole drumline. Four complete instrument palettes, with more than 100 sound and technique combinations. - Drum Kit — snare, bass drum, hi-hats, toms, and cymbals, plus cowbell, tambourine, clave, and gock block - Marching Snare — rimshots, cross-sticks, buzz and press rolls, backsticks, stick shots, stick clicks, ping shots, gock blocks, cowbell, and ribbon crasher - Marching Tenors — all six drums, with rim clicks, rimshots, buzz and press rolls, crossovers, stick shots, stick clicks, and skank - Marching Bassline — all five drums, with rim clicks, rimshots, buzz rolls, stick clicks, and unison hits Wrote it? Now practice it. Take the part to the pad or kit. Tap Open in Drumr to follow every note, loop the hard bars, build the tempo with speed training, and get Performance Analysis on your own music. Available on iPhone, iPad, and Macs with Apple silicon. Requires Drumr Premium, with a free 7-day trial. PDF and MusicXML Your scores live in the Files app or iCloud Drive as standard MusicXML files. Send one to another drummer and they can open and play it free in Notate. You can also share or print a PDF. Appearance Choose Light, Dark, or System, with preset or custom theme colors. Start writing Try writing and editing free for 7 days, then subscribe to keep composing. Opening, playing, and printing scores is free. No account needed. — Help/feedback: https://support.drumr.app Privacy: https://privacy.drumr.app Terms: https://terms.drumr.app Apple EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Drumr Notate at Free against Ensemble Composer's $14.99. Drumr Notate also leads on update cadence (daily vs every 2 months) and review sentiment (100% vs 77%). Ensemble Composer's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 2) and ratings volume (278 vs 5). On ads and device support 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
Drumr Notate is free to download; Ensemble Composer costs $14.99 up front. Drumr Notate sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $6.99 per month. Ensemble Composer asks for nothing beyond the download.
Drumr Notate holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Ensemble Composer has 278 ratings behind it against 5, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 77% of Ensemble Composer's written reviews are positive against 100% of Drumr Notate's.
Ensemble Composer ships an update every 2 months, Drumr Notate daily. Both last shipped on November 13, 2026.
| Parameter | Ensemble Composer | Drumr Notate |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $14.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.6 (278 ratings) | 4.8 (5 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 77.4% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 278 — better | 5 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Daily — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Paid | Free with in-app purchases — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.6 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 15 MB | 44 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | N. Wheeler | Drumr Inc. |
Customer experience
Ensemble Composer
Drumr Notate
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
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- 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
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- 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
Drumr Notate
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Ensemble Composer
No in-app purchases
Drumr Notate
- Monthly7 Days trial$6.991 Month
- Annual7 Days trial$39.991 Year
Questions
Is Ensemble Composer free?
Is Drumr Notate free?
Which has better reviews, Ensemble Composer or Drumr Notate?
Do Ensemble Composer or Drumr Notate have ads?
Which is updated more often, Ensemble Composer or Drumr Notate?
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