# Strum: Tabs Made Easy — Write. Tune. Play.

> Write. Tune. Play. (iPhone/iPad app by Mateusz Dabrowski.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/strum-tabs-made-easy/id6764788253 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Mateusz Dabrowski](https://appshunter.io/developer/1894059452)
- Category: Music, Utilities
- Price: $3.99
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 26.0 · 54 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2026-05-06
- Data updated: 2026-08-28
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/strum-tabs-made-easy/id6764788253/reviews.md

## What is Strum?

Strum is a clean, focused tablature editor for ukulele, guitar, and electric guitar. Write a song, drop in chords, set a strum pattern, and hear it back on a real recorded instrument - all on one screen, laid out the way fretted-instrument players think about a song.

» Tab-first editing
› Choose what you see: standard staff, tablature, beat counters, chord boxes, chord names, strum directions, and lyrics.
› Tap any beat to add or edit notes from chords or manual frets. Copy a measure and paste it anywhere, or duplicate whole sections.
› Section labels, repeat barlines, and per-section time signatures: a 5/4 bridge inside a 4/4 song is a two-tap change.

» Capo, written the way songbooks write it
› Set a capo on any song and playback moves to the real sounding pitch, while the tab keeps showing the frets you actually hold.
› Chord names do not change - a C shape is still "C" - and a "Capo 3" badge sits on the song and on exported PDFs.
› Standard notation follows the capo, because notation shows what you hear.
› The tuner knows too: tune the open strings as usual, then switch to the capoed pitches to check intonation.

» Real instruments, not a synth
› In Instrument mode nothing you hear is synthesised. The ukulele was recorded note by note for this app, so chords ring and fade the way the real thing does - body taps and muted chucks included.
› Guitar and electric guitar are sampled from real instruments too. If you would rather have the lighter built-in synth, it is one switch in Settings, set per device.

» Pay once, play forever
› No subscriptions, no accounts, no ads. Buy Strum once, and it's yours.

» Every tuning, and a tuner that knows them
› Ukulele: high-G, low-G, Baritone. Guitar and electric guitar: Standard, Eb half-step-down, Drop C, Drop D - each with its own full chord library.
› Build a custom tuning at any open-string pitch, or hide the ones you never use.
› The built-in tuner handles all of them, custom ones included, and can set a custom tuning by ear from a plucked string.
› An adaptive noise gate learns your room's background noise, ignoring voices and fans for a jitter-free needle, and it snaps straight to the correct string when you switch notes.
› Set the concert pitch anywhere from 415 Hz to 466 Hz, so an ensemble at 442 or a baroque group at 415 is one tap away.

» Practice hub
› Follow-tab highlights the current beat and chord as it plays, auto-scrolling your tab hands-free.
› The in-song metronome locks to your sheet music's time signature and subdivision, so it never drifts out of phase.
› Rhythm Training builds speed with automated tempo ramps and a live progress dashboard.
› Drop-Out Training mutes the click after a few measures, to test whether you drift.

» Chords and strum patterns
› A library of common ukulele and guitar shapes ready to drop into a beat, plus your own built in the multi-fret finger editor.
› Change a fingering globally, or long-press a chord in the Beat Editor to override it for one song.
› Build strum patterns from up and down strokes, arpeggios, fingerstyle, chucks, mutes, and rests. Save them, browse the built-in library by time signature, or set per-song and per-section overrides.

» iPhone, iPad, and Mac
› Strum scales from a quick lookup on your phone to a full editing surface on iPad or Mac. Your library syncs through your private iCloud account, so a song you wrote on the couch is waiting on your iPad at practice.

» PDF export and sharing
› Export any song as a clean PDF or image to print and share, or send the native .strum file to other players.

» Private by default
› Songs, folders, sections, custom chords, tunings, patterns, and preferences sync through your private Apple CloudKit database.
› The microphone is used only inside the tuner - audio is processed on-device and never recorded or sent anywhere.
› No accounts. No analytics. No third-party servers. Your songs never leave Apple's infrastructure.


## Version history (last 5 releases)

### 1.8.2 — 2026-08-14

Performance & optimisation round:
› Brought back improved undo manager to Mac
› Improved Rebuild feature
› Better duplicate management
› Fixed sync status visuals

### 1.8.1 — 2026-08-09

Performance & optimisation round:
› Faster sync
› Smoother scroll
› Lower battery drain
› Better rendering of multi-time signature songs
› Multiple improvements to rearrange the beats experience

### 1.8.0 — 2026-08-03

» New
› Capo. Set one on any song and playback moves to the real sounding pitch, while the tab keeps showing the frets you actually hold. Chord names stay the ones you know - a C shape is still "C" - with a "Capo 3" badge on the song and on exported PDFs, exactly like a songbook
› Mute and Chuck are now separate strokes. Chuck is the percussive "chk", Mute is a silent damp that just stops the strings ringing. The chuck is a recording of a real muted strum now, so in Instrument mode nothing you hear is synthesised any more
› Tune to any concert pitch. A new "A = 440 Hz" control at the bottom of the tuner follows an ensemble sitting at 442, a baroque group at 415, or 432 if that is your thing
› Baritone ukulele now offers the same chord set as every other tuning - Ab, Bb, C#, Eb, F# and Fadd9 were quietly missing

» Fixed
› The tuner survives unplugging headphones or switching audio device mid-tune instead of freezing
› Rhythm Lab uses the metronome sound you picked, instead of always clicking with the built-in synth
› Custom guitar tunings now appear for electric guitar too, and the other way round
› The "Recovered (Sync Reset)" folder tidies itself away once you have emptied it
› A steadier toolbar while iCloud is syncing

### 1.7.0 — 2026-07-28

» New
› Recorded my own ukulele voice and body tap and sampled guitar sounds. Go to Settings → Playback sound to switch between Instrument and Synth
› Added Electric guitar as its own instrument, sharing the guitar's tunings and chords
› Two new guitar tunings: Eb Standard (half-step down) and Drop C - same chord shapes you already know
› Build a custom tuning right from the New Song screen

» Fixed
› Fingerstyle lets notes ring - picking one string no longer cuts off different string from before
› Exported PDFs show the song's real instrument
› A batch of iCloud reliability fixes

### 1.6.2 — 2026-07-02

1. New Copy/Paste feature for measures to simplify the song creation process
2. Improvements to staff rendering

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## Related topics

[tabs pocket edition](https://appshunter.io/ios/topics/tabs-pocket-edition) · [sturm](https://appshunter.io/ios/topics/sturm)

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*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 2026-08-28.*