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. And it imports your Strum Machine songs.
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 | — |
| 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 |
| Foot-pedal / page-turner support | Yes | Yes |
| Record / export to MP3 | Yes | Yes |
| Getting started | ||
| Price | Free during beta | Paid subscription |
| Bring your existing songs | Imports SM songs | — |
Comparison reflects publicly available information about Strum Machine as of July 2026. Strum Machine's instruments are guitar, standup bass, and mandolin; banjo, tab playback, and live session sync are not features it currently offers. If anything here is out of date, tell us and we'll fix it.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.
Bring your songs
Already built up a library in Strum Machine? A one-time browser bookmark exports your custom songs to a file you import into Jam Trainer — chords, keys, and tempos intact.
Move my songs over →Works from any desktop browser · Your songs sync to all your devices