If you love practicing to a full band of real recorded instruments, you'll feel right at home. Jam Trainer adds the two things pickers ask for most: a real banjo, and tab you can play along with.
Side by side
Strum Machine is a great app, and a lot here works the way you're used to. These are the honest differences — the things that are the same, and the things Jam Trainer adds.
| Feature | Jam Trainer | Strum Machine |
|---|---|---|
| What Jam Trainer adds | ||
| Banjo — Scruggs-style rolls with the 5th-string drone | Yes | — |
| Play along with written tab (banjo, guitar & mandolin) | Yes | — |
| Live jam-session sync — the whole jam follows one chart | Yes | — |
| Spoons (because why not) | Yes | — |
| Lyrics with the chords over the words, scrolling as the band plays | Yes | Notepad — align by hand |
| Foot-pedal / page-turner — map any pedal in the app | Yes | Keyboard shortcuts only |
| Practice tools — free, no login | ||
| Chromatic tuner, with a drone — banjo, mandolin, guitar & fiddle | Yes | — |
| Standalone metronome — its own tempo & meter, kit and spoken-count voices, subdivisions, coach mode | Yes | In-song metronome only |
| Chord fingering diagrams — guitar, banjo & mandolin | Yes | Guitar voicings only |
| Scale charts | Yes | — |
| Ear-training games — chord quality, intervals, chord tones & Nashville numbers | Yes | — |
| What works the same | ||
| Guitar, bass & mandolin — real recorded instruments | Yes | Yes |
| Big shared song library (1,000+ tunes) | Yes | Yes |
| Any key, any tempo | Yes | Yes |
| Build & edit your own chord charts | Yes | Yes |
| Works offline | Yes | Yes |
| Loop a tricky section | Yes | Yes |
| Nashville numbers instead of letters | Yes | Yes |
| Auto speed-up — tempo nudges up each time through | Yes | Yes |
| Print-friendly chord charts | Yes | Yes |
| Share a song or a list by link | Yes | Yes |
| Phone & tablet | Web app — add to home screen | iOS & Android apps |
| Getting started | ||
| Price | $5/mo · $49/yr or $149 one-time |
$5/mo · $49/yr |
| Try before you pay | 8 songs free, no account then a 14-day trial (card required) |
14-day free trial (no card) |
Comparison reflects publicly available information about Strum Machine, re-checked 22 September 2026. Strum Machine's instruments are guitar, standup bass, and mandolin; banjo, tab playback, and live session sync are not features it currently offers. On lyrics: Strum Machine has a per-song Notepad that holds lyrics as text, and its help page shows how to line chords up over the words by hand using a monospace block — Jam Trainer builds that layout from the chart itself and scrolls it with the band as it plays. On foot pedals: Strum Machine has a fixed set of keyboard shortcuts, so a programmable pedal can be set up to trigger them — Jam Trainer lets you map any pedal to any key from inside the app. On the practice tools: Strum Machine does have a count-in, a tap-tempo button and an auto-speedup that ramps the tempo as you repeat a song, and it has a metronome you turn on within a song — its help centre states there is "no standalone metronome tool available yet". Its guitar voicings panel shows a chord shape, but it sets what the backing guitar plays rather than being a chord library, and it covers no banjo or mandolin; scale charts and a tuner are not features it offers. Strum Machine has native iOS and Android apps; Jam Trainer runs in any browser and installs to your home screen. On trials: Strum Machine asks for no card up front; Jam Trainer takes card details to start a trial and charges nothing until it ends — cancel before then and you pay nothing. The eight free songs need no account and no card at all. Prices are in USD. If anything here is out of date, tell us and we'll fix it.
The two big ones
These are the requests we heard most from pickers — so they're built in from day one.
Scruggs-style rolls with a correctly-tuned 5th-string drone, in every key. Your backing track finally sounds like a bluegrass band, not a trio missing its banjo player.
Load a tab and Jam Trainer plays it note-for-note right alongside the band — banjo, guitar, or mandolin. Hear exactly how the break sits in the tune, at any speed.
Start a session and everyone's chart follows the same chord in real time. Prop the iPad on the stand and the group stays together, hands-free.