Custom Strums

The eight built-in strum patterns cover most songs, but not the one in your head. Custom Strums is where you write your own — a named pattern that then appears in the Strum menu alongside the presets.

List

Every pattern you've written is listed by name, with a compact map of the pattern underneath it — D for a down-stroke, U for an up, and . for a rest, grouped a beat at a time. It's enough to recognise a pattern at a glance without opening it.

Like other lists in the OnSong^® app, you can tap on an item to edit it and swipe right to left to delete it. To add a new pattern, tap on the + button in the upper right corner.

Editor

The editor is opened if you tap on an existing strum panther, or tap the + button to create a new one. This editor let's you specify a name and a pattern.

Name

This is what the pattern is called in the custom strum menu. Leave it blank and it's saved as My Strum.

Pattern

One bar, divided into sixteenths, laid out as two rows of eight. The captions above the squares are how you'd count it out loud — 1 e & a, 2 e & a on the first row, 3 e & a, 4 e & a on the second — so the square you want is the one you'd say.

Tap a square to cycle it:

• — a rest. Nothing happens on that sixteenth.
• ↓ a down-stroke, raking from the lowest note of the chord upward.
• ↑ an up-stroke, raking back down from the top.

Tapping again from ↑ returns it to a rest, so a wrong tap is two taps from undone.

A new pattern starts with a down on each of the four beats — a plain quarter-note strum — rather than an empty grid, so you're editing something that already plays.

Saving

Save Changes stores the pattern and closes the card. It appears in the Strum menu's Custom section immediately, and is selected the same way a preset is.

To leave without saving, tap the ✕ in the corner of the card, or tap the dimmed area outside it.

Down-strokes on the beats with ups on the "&"s is the shape most acoustic patterns take. Start there, then remove strokes rather than adding them — most memorable strum patterns are defined by where they don't play.