Early access to Band Settings 2.0 👀
Hello fellow music-makers!
Since you're signed up for this "backstage pass" email list, I'm giving you early access to the next big update to Strum Machine.
Check it out: bandalpha.strummachine.com
(This particular alpha version uses the same database as the main version, so any changes made here will show up in the main version and vice versa.)
Some of the highlights of this upgrade:
- New settings to customize the feel of the boom-chuck strumming patterns (beat emphasis, number of upstrokes, etc.)
- Automatic bass runs and leading notes (opt-in setting)
- New syncopated strum option that works better for bluegrass
- Customizable sustain and backbeat for the dampened strums
- Root chord shape/position/voicing options
- ...and more!
All this can be found under Band Settings, in a menu that has been lovingly redesigned for clarity and ease-of-use, thanks in large part to the work of esteemed designer (and fellow banjoist) Tyler Stegall.
Give the alpha a try today! In particular, if anything didn't make sense right away, or if anything didn't work like you'd first expected it to, we want to know! At least some other users will most likely have the same experience, and we want to get this as polished as we can before releasing it to everyone.
That's it for the announcement! Now, if you'd like to hear a bit of backstory, read on:
The journey to get here
We started working on this project back in March of this year. It was originally going to be a small "first project" for my new collaborator Tyler: some tweaks to the band menu to accommodate a couple new settings I was adding. Probably a few weeks of work. But, as so often happens in software development, that original scope of work kept expanding.
We revamped the strumming pattern visualizations. The band settings menu itself got a new coat of paint. More strumming customizations got added. I even made a first attempt at automatic bass runs—not part of the plan but I started prototyping one day and couldn't stop. Weeks became months, until we had completely overhauled and redesigned the band settings menu.
We mostly finished that update and quietly released it for beta testing in May (you may have even used that beta version). The reaction among beta testers was quite positive. But something about what we'd built kept nagging at me: we'd given users a lot of new knobs and dials to tweak how the guitar strumming sounded, but it all felt a bit too... clunky.
The reality is, when I play (or listen to) guitar, I'm not thinking about how many upstrokes are being played, how often beat 3 is being skipped, etc... it's intuitive, feelings-based, and non-technical. And the more we thought about the potential of inventing a more intuitive, expressive, and fun UI for strumming pattern adjustments, the more excited Tyler and I got.
So after that first beta release, we went back to the drawing board and started iterating on a new interface for changing the "feel" of a standard bluegrass-style strumming pattern. We asked ourselves, if we could invent a whole new way of customizing a strumming pattern, one that was intuitive, "tactile", and fun to use, what would that look like?
It took a lot of iteration.
Eventually, we came up with what we've been calling the Spatial UI. Not only did this new UI consolidate several disparate settings into one easy-to-use slider, but we were pleasantly surprised by just how fun it was to use!
You can play with this new UI for yourself by opening the guitar settings, choosing one of the "boom chuck with upstrokes" patterns, then clicking into the "Feel" setting.
(No screenshot because I don't want to spoil the surprise! Seriously, go try it and see what you think.)
This breakthrough got us thinking: would it be possible to make the rest of band settings feel this satisfying to play with?
Spoiler alert: not quite. 😂 But we did make some major improvements to the rest of the band settings menu, and I'm glad we took the time to do so because I'm very proud of where we ended up.
What's next
I'm hoping to be ready to release this to the public for beta testing by the end of the month. 🤞 But in the meantime, since it's 98% complete, I wanted to give you all a chance to play around with it first. If you do, let me know what you think. In particular, tell me about (or take a screenshot of) any part of the interface that made you go, "huh?" or didn't make sense. Any and all feedback will be read with great appreciation!
I am so excited to be nearing the finish line on this update, seven months in the making. We're getting closer and closer to realizing my dreams for what the instruments in Strum Machine could do, and it's exhilarating!
I hope you enjoy this update to the app, and I hope you enjoyed this (admittedly lengthy) email update as well. I'll try to send out emails slightly more often in the future so that I can make them shorter! 😂
Thanks for reading,
Luke