Today, the Strum Machine website and apps got the “Band Settings 3.0” update that’s been in beta testing. It’s a fun one!
I made a video that shows you what’s new and demos some of the new presets:
I’ll also paste in the release notes for this update:
Now it’s easier than ever to load a preset musical style (or make your own presets!), and we’ve added a bunch of new presets (especially in the bluegrass category) and we’ll expand the list further based on user feedback.
To go along with the new presets, we’ve made some improvements to the instruments:
- The standup bass can now play four-note-per-bar walking bass lines! Great for jazz, swing, country, and more.
- The mandolin chop sustain and intensity/loudness can now be adjusted – we made it somewhat “dry” (less sustain) by default.
- The mandolin can now insert rhythmic accents (downbeat strums and upstrokes) into the chop, according to your settings.
- There are new half-time patterns for the mandolin chop and standup bass to match the existing half-time pattern for the guitar. All three of these patterns will be improved in the future, but even this basic version opens up some fun new possibilities.
- You can now make the guitar substitute all C chords with Cadd9 when in the key of G – I added this specifically for the new “mash” preset.
Beyond that:
- The overall Band Settings interface has been improved to be cleaner and easier to navigate.
- When sharing a song that you’ve created or edited, the person viewing the song will be able to load your band settings. (This can be a roundabout way of sharing band presets.)
- Various minor bugs that have been reported over the past couple months have been fixed.
(You can always view release notes in Strum Machine by going to the top-left menu and clicking “About / Version History”.)
Behind the Scenes
What started as a redesign of the Presets page in the Band Settings menu (something Tyler and I punted from the 2.0 update) turned into a bigger re-think of the whole band UI, taking the better part of 2024 to come into fruition—although, to be fair, we did take some side-quests to:
- completely overhaul the song editor [forum post],
- add a metronome feature [forum post],
- attend IBMA [YouTube video], and
- fix a bunch of bugs…
- not to mention spend a lot of time on the drawing board working on brand new features!
So what’s this update really about and why did I make it a priority for 2024?
The main goals had to do with presets:
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I wanted to add a bunch of new presets, which meant we needed a way to put presets into folders and describe them in more detail.
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I wanted to make it as easy as possible to discover and access these presets… and I didn’t want to add any more clicks with the introduction of preset folders.
Sounds easy enough… and I thought it would be a short project at first. But, one thing led to another, and we ended up having to choosing to overhaul the Band Settings menu in order to give the best possible experience to new and experienced users alike.
The hope is that surfacing these presets right on the main Band Settings menu will make users more likely to experiment with them. (I mean, there’s nothing wrong with sticking with the default simple boom-chuck backup for all your songs! But for those looking for a little more variety, we want to make finding new presets as easy as possible.)
I hope you all enjoy this update! Have a great holiday season and end of the year, everyone. 
