Now the StrumMachine Beta has great rhythm patters, etc. I find myself using it in public for backup tracks. Now I realize I could really use the ability to just hit a shuffle button to randomize the songs in a playlist so I don’t have to manually reorder them every time. Think of it like shuffle in playlists in Spotify and iTunes.
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Using your device/laptop/tablet for performance you’d use a shuffle feature to mix up your setlist?
Exactly. Right now I just do it mentally and jump around my playlist. I’d rather just have a button to tap to shuffle the list and just play through it. That way the order is always different and makes it feel a little fresh. I don’t want to play thru the list the exact same way every time.
I don’t use Auto Advance as I prefer to control when the next song starts. That means I touch the iPad between every song. I’m not likely to rearrange my setlist randomly while performing but having to touch the iPad anyway means the next song wouldn’t start without me knowing what’s coming.
Pretty much how I do it too. Auto-advance but not auto start. That with shuffle would be a great way to mix the playlist experience up, literally.
I mixed up the terminology of auto advance and auto play. For those who aren’t using Auto Advance it doesn’t have to mean the song starts playing but that option is available.
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There’s a shuffle button on the list navigation bar, labeled “3” on this screenshot (from the help docs):
Shuffle: You can use the shuffle feature to mix up your practice routine. When you enable it, the next/previous song links will traverse a randomized list that Strum Machine generates and stores in memory. This guarantees that every song in your list will be served up exactly once , until you get through all the songs in the list. At that point, you’ll see a “Reshuffle list” link, which you can use to start over with a newly-randomized list.
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Geez McQueez. I never noticed that before 
And it works perfectly, yay! Thanks Luke.
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My favorite kind of feature request. 
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This makes me think of an earlier request I had to save the list in the order I had played tunes. That way I could see at a glance what I was working on at the top of the list, and usually that’s what I go back to. Neither random, nor alphabetical, it’s another kind of “sort” in order of closing tunes. It would probably require its own folder. As you indicated before that might be hard to do, I don’t know. I thought I’d ask again and see. Would be very useful.
I’m looking forward to the new build when it’s ready.
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You mean you want to save the order that you play songs from randomly choosing them from a list over time? If so, you would need to first let StrumMachine know that that was what you wanted to do so that it could track your choices, otherwise it would have no idea you wanted to save those choice. Especially since most people who randomly choice a tune to play from a list don’t expect that choice to be saved. Seems like you should just make a couple of extra lists with just the the tunes you want to play like that and put them in the order you want to play. Am I missing something here?
No, not dependant of how you chose to play the tunes originally. Just a folder that shows your last played tunes on top. Like sorting files in a folder on a Mac, you can select show by alphabetical, or date added, etc. or by date last opened. It’s a no-brainer to me. I might have 150 tunes in a list but having them sorted by last played gives me everything I am working on next time I log in, without having to remember and find tunes alphabetically by title every time, or keep a separate folder that I must keep up to date. With this feature when I select a new tune I haven’t played recently it will go to the top of the list, with the other most recently played tunes below it in decending order. I can also tell by what’s at the bottom what has been overlooked for a while.
I always sorted BIAB tunes that way when I used that program to practice and the files were on my computer instead of online like they are here. Strum Machine has replaced the awkward BIAB in every way for me, but this.
OK, that’s different. And I see the utility, but it sounds like if it were me, I wouldn’t want the last played song first but last, so that the tunes at the top were the ones I should play. Otherwise, if their at the top, how are you supposed to know how far down to go to get the the tunes you should play? Seems like you’d want the list to show you the songs you haven’t played first so you can play them. Or show you the songs by least played so that those are at the top of the list, making it easier to work through the list.
Yeah, sorting by last played, in either ascending or descending order. That’s still on my list. Some folks (like you Brian) have asked to be able to see a sorted list, while others have asked for a list of most recently played songs across all of Strum Machine (probably as a separate, automatically-updated list). Not sure which I’ll do (or none or both) but I will revisit when I have a few other things wrapped up, like the new instrument styles!
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Yes, either ascending or descending. Glad it’s still on your list for maybe someday.
Hi Luke, A sorting feature would still be great. It came up again the other night with my small Monday night group. We use Strum Machine to play with. Since we have probably around 150 tunes we’re working with it would be very helpful to be able to sort a folder by order played to see where we were the previous week, or anytime. I also practice alone with the program and it would be a help in the same way.
No complaints, great program.