# Strum Machine - Backing Tracks — user reviews > 61 indexed App Store user reviews of Strum Machine by Luke Abbott LLC, rated 4.70/5 from 118 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/strum-machine-backing-tracks/id1509158553/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/strum-machine-backing-tracks/id1509158553.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 105 · 4★ 5 · 3★ 1 · 2★ 2 · 1★ 5 ## Newest reviews (14 of 61) ### 5/5 — Game changer *2025-07-25, version 1.418.0* A real game changer for practice and learning new material, getting it up to jam speed…highly recommend ### 5/5 — Spoil me Rotten *2025-07-19* Love this strum machine…it has spoiled me rotten. Been playing Banjo for two years n it adds a whole new dimension to my picking. Easy to navigate. Any questions n Luke gets right back to me. Sounds like a band backing me up. Thankyou Jim Panky for mentioning it on you tube. I will never leave home without it. Well done, Luke! ### 5/5 — Easy to use *2025-07-13, version 1.416.7* This is a must have app if you are learning new tunes, or even polishing up your old tunes. ### 5/5 — Amazing app! *2025-04-28* TL;DR - for the bluegrass or folk/old time musician, Strum Machine is much better than iReal Pro I recently came to bluegrass from a jazz background. As you can imagine I had iReal Pro and, since I already paid for that app, I tried to use it for bluegrass as well, but the experience wasn’t great. Then I heard about Strum Machine and that it is made specifically for bluegrass so I decided to get the free trial and… I was instantly hooked! For folk, old time and Bluegrass there is absolutely no comparison, Strum Machine is 100X better than iReal. ### 5/5 — Such a Great App. *2025-04-13* I have been using this app in demo mode for about an hour and have just subscribed. I was probably sold on it within the first five minutes. Interface is simple and streamlined, making it very easy to use. The variety this machine can give is downright incredible, from strumming patterns, cross-picking, syncopation, key changes, and much more. I’m excited to see the rest of the song library. Even if you don’t play bluegrass, this thing is a tool you should really have! ### 5/5 — Perfect app! *2025-04-09* This app is literally amazing. It's a perfect backing track app but not only is it a backing track app! It has so many songs that other sites find difficult to get the correct chords/rhythm. And then you can adjust the rhythm, adjust the tempo, take out instruments, add instruments, adjust volumes of instruments, adjust the pan from left to right of certain instruments, change the strumming style of instruments, update songs to suit your own playability (or in my case how the family played it wrong for many years but still sounded OK haha), change chords within an existing song or create your own for backing tracks. The owner is constantly updating things and is actually reachable by email which is unheard of!!! This is worth the monthly subscription people... seriously. ### 5/5 — Awesome *2025-01-21, version 1.408.0* Great practice tool! ### 5/5 — Long time user *2024-08-23* I have been using this app for over 3 years and up till then I was using different backing tracks of varying degrees of quality. I still use Steve Kaufmans workout tracks but mostly it is strum machine. The flexibility of this app is amazing, the control over tempo and volume control for all the instruments is perfect. Luke seems to have a keen eye as to what the average player wants or needs. The ability to record your backing tracks for off line practice is great, the different rhythms have allowed me to add jigs and reels and even the odd polka to my practice routine. If I was asked what has helped me the most in my playing it would be strum machine, it really is one of the most useful apps on here. ### 5/5 — Outstanding Tool *2024-05-13* I am a long time guitar player of various genres. Primarily these days I am in to Bluegrass flatpicking both Guitar and Mandolin. Without question, strum machine has done more to advance my music, not only in terms of skills but also in enjoying my practice sessions than any other tool. These days I don’t ever practice without first turning on Strum Machine and utilizing it’s many tools. Also, Luke and his team are constantly upgrading and improving the tool. Well worth the annual minimal fee! ### 5/5 — Strummachine *2024-02-29* My guitar and banjo picking have improved enormously since I began using this great backing track. Hugely flexible in terms of key and speed. E.G. I like to learn some fiddle tunes in two keys and SMachine allows you to modulate between keys without a hitch. I think it's brilliant! ### 5/5 — Does Everything I Can Ask *2024-02-12* I was struggling trying to get Band in a Box to perform the simple task of giving me backing tracks. A friend told me Band in a Box is great and on that (bad) advice I spent $100 on it. It's so convoluted and tedious to set up. And then all of their Bluegrass backing tracks sound like just noise. I couldn't figure out how to get just a boom chuck strum with mandolin chops. And I couldn't get it to sound right in split time. I'm sure with a lot of work and study, it is possible to get it sounding great but I don't have time to master a programming language just to get some backing tracks. Anyway... I heard about Strum Machine from Marcel and it seemed like an option, but I had some questions: -Can I use it offline? -Can I put in my own songs? -Does it provide the solid rhythm I need? -Is it easy to use? -Can I use it on my ipad? And is the app easy to open and activate each time? The answer to all of these is "yes". Strum Machine has been nothing but a joy to work with. It's so simple to set up and gives me exactly what I need for backing tracks. I can't say enough good things about it. ### 5/5 — Great practice aid *2024-01-07* Great to use when learning new tunes or trying to improve on learned tunes. I use an iPad with external bluetooth speaker. Really helps to have realistic backing track when playing. Not as fun as playing with others but the second best option. ### 5/5 — Fantastic! *2023-12-03* This app is absolutely FANTASTIC! Strum Machine’s advertised purpose is as a practice tool, doing backing tracks that are much more interesting than a metronome. Perfect! But wait, there’s more. Do you like using Nashville Numbers style charts for gigs? Strum Machine is perfect for that too. It has a very easy and intuitive editor to set up cleanly formatted NNS style charts. You can easily add lyrics into the notes field. And then easily build set lists. The whole shebang displays nicely on your iPhone, so you can clip your iPhone to your mic stand. It’s wonderful. It just works! ### 5/5 — Outstanding Tool *2023-10-20* I am a long time guitar player of various genres. Primarily these days I am in to Bluegrass flatpicking both Guitar and Mandolin. Without question, strum machine has done more to advance my music, not only in terms of skills but also in enjoying my practice sessions than any other tool. These days I don’t ever practice without first turning on Strum Machine and utilizing it’s many tools. Also, Luke and his team are constantly upgrading and improving the tool. Well worth the annual minimal fee! ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Payment system and support problems *2024-02-14* No way to subscribe in the usual way via Apple. No PayPal option, and Strum Machine "sypport" offered no meaningful help in this regard. Although they were quick to reply, they implied you could just purchase a supscription through the Apple Store, but thats not the case. As things stand I cannot recommend this app. And as a partner in a music school, recommending useful apps to students via our teaching staff is a thing I do daily... So for the time being, we continue to recommend iReal Pro as the recommended powerful, versatile and affordable tool to support their lessons. I hope Strum Machine get this resolved because it has potential. ### 1/5 — do not get this *2021-08-09, version 1.334.0* its not free. downloaded the app and tried to play as song but there is no sound, it wants you to sign up for 4.99 a month ### 2/5 — Messed up rhythm.. *2025-07-27* The beat is all messed up on my iPad but it works on my iPhone.The new update won’t download either. **Developer response:** Please write me at support@strummachine.com and include the model and iOS version of your iPad. The latest update includes a fix for the audio/rhythm issues that some users were experiencing on their iOS devices recently, so it’s important that they’re able to download the latest update, and I’m sorry to hear you’re having difficulty doing this. Hoping that you will get in touch so we can get this resolved for you. Thanks! ### 2/5 — Closes immediately *2024-08-17* The app closes immediately after opening. Works great on my phone and laptop but doesn’t work on my iPad. ### 2/5 — Love the app—when it works… *2021-12-04, version 1.344.5* The last two times I’ve tried to use it’s it wouldn’t download. I keep having to delete it and reload it. Not worth all the hassle! ### 3/5 — Great app, but far too expensive *2024-02-11* The app does what it advertises – and it does it intuitively and accurately. Whatever song is called in a bluegrass jam session – it is most likely available here. If the singer calls an esoteric tuning: no problem. If you want to practice at home with high quality backing tracks, this is your app. But man is it expensive. A one-time payment for this app – even a high one (say € 29,90) would convince me in an instant. But paying € 5,49 every month makes this app too expensive for me. ### 3/5 — Great app… but.. *2022-10-22* This is a great app, it’s really well designed and does what it says.. but it’s subscription based why? Remember when you could just pay for software once and then use it? Subscriptions are just greedy. I’d happily pay a once off price that gives most full song writing features and then pay for songs I want.. then I’d give this as many stars as possible.. but as is I just can’t give it a good review. It’s just not worth $9 a month. **Developer response:** For what it's worth: Strum Machine has taken thousands upon thousands of hours of work to get to where it is today, and I plan to keep improving it for years to come. At the same time, it is "niche" software with a relatively small number of users. Without the subscription model, I simply would not be able to afford to spend the amount of time on building and improving the product as I can now. It's not greed; I built this app for the music community that I love, not to get rich. Having an ongoing subscription means I get to focus almost all of my energy on supporting my users and improving the product, versus continually trying to find new users so that I can put food on the table. 🙂 ### 4/5 — Excellent Customer Service, great practice tool. *2025-09-18, version 1.425.0* I would like to give this App 5 stars, however, I am not a fan of the subscription model. Aside from that an excellent practice tool. ### 4/5 — Love it! *2023-12-19* This app does the basics and it does them very well. This is a really good practice tool. A change that I’d request is midi and/or audio export. Fingers crossed. Great job. ### 4/5 — Newest update *2022-10-05, version 1.371.0* The powerful sounding guitar has been replaced by a twangy sounding one. It would be nice to have both as options, instead of just removing the old one. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Practice *2026-06-23, version 1.444.7* This is not just a practice app it gives you the motivation to play. As a banjo player all the help is appreciated ### 5/5 — A great way to practice *2026-06-21* I always hated practicing music in a void, as music is meant to be played with others. This is a great way to practice alone! Looking forward to seeing how far they take this app. Well worth it. Also helpful to pull up a chord chart for someone if you are playing and they don’t know the chords. ### 5/5 — No Longer Login -fixed *2026-06-17* Updating- support was awesome and got me logged in, and next day updated the app. After updating today I can no longer log in using the app subscription function… and I’m at a festival! Pretty disappointing. Otherwise when it worked, it’s a great practice aid. **Developer response:** I’m very sorry about this! Many users were logged out as an unexpected side effect of a necessary migration. I apologize for the interruption. Please email us if you haven’t already and we’ll help you get logged back in ASAP. ### 5/5 — Must download for Bluegrass players. The only app you will need *2026-06-08, version 1.425.0* I’ve been using backing tracks for 10 years mainly off of YouTube. Downloaded countless apps. None have the ease of use of this app. It’s simple. Yet you can edit settings change strum patterns to every instrument. Mute instruments if needed. However the one thing I hope to see them add is the ability to change the instruments for an individual section of a song like after so many bars you could have a light strum to the guitar or just have the bass play but then go back to the normal settings. Please make this happen Luke ### 5/5 — Phenomenal! *2025-12-02, version 1.425.0* What a joy! The adjustments you can make to the instruments is remarkable, like the amount of swing, anticipating or dragging the beat, types of walking bass; great for jamming and also for teaching and demonstrating these musical subtleties. Thank you! ### 5/5 — Great app *2025-11-30* Great app for practicing with. Thanks. ### 5/5 — My soulmate for sure! *2025-10-06* I use this every day. It is simple to use. It was recommended by a friend. We have spread the news. Luke answers any questions one might have, almost instantly. My music teacher is so pleased that I constantly make use of such a great tool. ### 5/5 — It’s my practice companion *2025-09-19* I was an early user, and Luke is absolutely the best developer that I’ve ever experienced. He’s a bluegrass musician, so he knows how the app should function from the users perspective. Always squashing bugs quickly and delivering timely feature enhancements. You won’t be disappointed. ### 5/5 — Love this app *2025-09-07, version 1.422.0* I hate subscriptions, but I’ve made an exception with Strum Machine. I’m working on my mandolin chops, and Strum Machine has been really helpful getting up (lol) to speed! ### 5/5 — Best Practice Tool *2025-07-26, version 1.418.0* This is the best ever practice tool! Band is with you playing along. So much fun. --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-29.*