Guitar enhancements (incl. bass runs!) now in beta
How to try the new beta, plus a behind-the-scenes look at the development process.
Hey friends,
I just published a new beta version of Strum Machine, which you can access at beta.strummachine.com on all platforms, as well as with the SM Beta TestFlight app on iOS. Check it out!
I posted an announcement with details about what's new in this beta on the forum. Please go there to read more, and you're welcome to leave feedback on the forum and/or by replying to this email.
You can also just check out the new features by opening any song in the beta app, opening the band settings menu, and clicking on Guitar. Be sure to check out the new bass runs, among other things!
Now, since you've got the Backstage Pass to Strum Machine (i.e., you're subscribed to this newsletter), I'll let you in on a bit of behind-the-scenes context around this beta release. 😎
As with most of my bigger updates, the initial vision ("scope") for this release was much smaller: a couple simple customization options for some of the guitar strumming patterns, a nice little design polishing project for my new designer Tyler, some new basic bass and mandolin options, and some coding to lay the foundation for new features to come. And I desperately wanted to keep the scope small, because I wanted everything to be wrapped up by the end of May. (I will be doing some international travel this summer and I didn't want to leave things half-finished -- or worse, rush to publish something with half-baked features and bugs.)
At the same time, with something as important as the band settings menu, I very much want to "do it right". And as we dug into things, it became clear that there was much to explore and iterate on.
And iterate we did; each of the little white boxes below is a separate iteration of some aspect of the band settings menu:
We also decided that this situation called for some usability testing, which we ended up doing with around 10 folks. Big thanks (again) to everyone who participated – it was SO helpful to watch folks using the interface and run up against things that need improvement.
I feel like the headline feature of this release is bass runs. I was not planning to work on that so soon, but I needed a fun distraction one day. 😉 Once I got a basic proof-of-concept working I knew I had to include the feature, scope creep be damned!
As my self-imposed May 31 deadline grew closer, I started to get pretty anxious about my chances of being able to reach it. But eventually I realized that nobody but me was holding myself to the deadline, so I could relax about it. 😅
It still feels like there's SO much work to be done with this part of Strum Machine: more guitar strumming patterns, options for bass and mandolin, more built-in presets, improved bass runs (they only work between a handful of chords at the moment), etc. And I may have to leave this in a half-finished state for awhile as I won't be able to do heavy feature development while I'm traveling.
But at the same time, I'm very proud of what Tyler and I have done with the band settings up to this point... especially when I go back to the "old" version at strummachine.com and see where we came from! 😆
(New vs old: better contrast, nicer spacing, more visible Presets button, nicer Add/Remove experience, inline Help, and more... and that's just the one screen!)
It seems very cliche to say "this is just the beginning"... but that's what it feels like! I'm very excited for what's to come, and I'm going to keep updating the beta over the next ~4 weeks, so stay tuned!
Cheers,
Luke