Medleys

Medleys, also known as “sets”, are made up of a series of songs/tunes played one right after the other. You can easily create medleys in Strum Machine using existing tunes in your library (built-in tunes and/or ones you’ve added yourself).

The following video goes through the basics of creating and using a medley in Strum Machine.

When to Use Auto-Advance Instead

If you don’t need the songs to be shown on one screen and played back-to-back with no pause, you’re probably better off using the Auto-Advance feature with a list instead. You’ll be able to focus on one song at a time, you’ll have time to transition between songs as needed, and you’ll be able to make loops, access the Notepad and References, and use Speedup/Auto-Modulate – features that are unavailable in medleys.

Creating a Medley

To create a medley, the first step is to go to whatever you want the first song in the medley to be. Once you’ve loaded that song, click on Edit at the top of the screen (or on a phone), then click on Make a new medley.

A window will appear, where you can add more songs to the medley by searching for (and then clicking on) them. Once you’ve added the songs you want, click Create Medley to open up your new medley.

Medley Settings

At the top of the medley, there’s a play/stop button as usual, plus a “main BPM” setting which determines the tempo for all songs in the medley, unless otherwise specified (see below).

Each song in the medley has a heading with various buttons and settings available:

After the title of the song, there are playback settings for each song:

1. The key to play the song in
2. The tempo for this song – same as the main BPM by default, but you can override it
3. The number of times to repeat this song before continuing on to the next one – once by default, up to 12 times
4. The band settings to use for this song

You can also click on the song title to open the song on its own; this is useful if you want to focus on just one song for a bit, or perhaps use features that are unavailable in medleys such as Speedup or looping.

Adding, Rearranging, and Removing Songs

To make changes to the list of songs used in the medley, go to the Edit menu and click “Add/remove/reorder songs”. You’ll be able to search for additional songs for the medley, remove songs from the lineup, or drag songs around to change the order.

How songs and medleys are related

When you add songs to a medley in Strum Machine, those songs are not copied or duplicated. Instead, the medley is just a list of references to the songs in your library. This means that if you make changes to a song that’s in a medley, those changes will be reflected in the medley as well. It also means that if you delete one of the songs in the medley, it will be removed from the medley as well.

Renaming the Medley

The medley’s title is automatically generated from the songs within it, and updated if those songs are changed or reordered. If you’d prefer to set a custom name for a medley, just click on the medley title and type in a new name. If you want to go back to the automatic title, just erase your custom title.

Limitations of Medleys

Compared to songs, medleys have a few limitations – some by design, and some that may be addressed in the future:

• Medleys play through once and then stop; they don’t repeat automatically. (This is by design, as medleys are generally not repeated in real life.)

• You can’t loop part of a medley. (This may be addressed in the future.)

• Medleys don’t have a “Capoed Chords” option. (This may be added in the future… although I’m unsure if it should be per-song or for the whole medley.)

• Medleys don’t have a Notepad or References like songs do. (These will be added in the future.)

Changes are Saved Automatically

There’s no “Save” button, because any changes you make to a medley are automatically saved.