StepStrum Lite
Turn chords into natural strummed patterns.
A free MIDI strumming plugin for turning held chords into realistic, tempo-synced strummed patterns with simple control over timing, groove, and feel.
What StepStrum Lite lets you do
Sketch natural strummed MIDI parts quickly, using your own chords and any instrument that responds to MIDI.
Turn chords into strummed MIDI
Play a chord and hear a tempo-synced strummed pattern immediately.
Shape the strum
Adjust timing, swing, gate, humanize, and velocity response from one place.
Build pattern slots
Create and switch between up to eight rhythmic ideas.
Program the rhythm
Turn steps on or off and choose up/down direction per step.
Sketch faster
Create guitar-style rhythm parts without drawing every MIDI note by hand.
Core controls
Nine controls let you shape how your strums feel, from timing and groove to velocity and retrigger behavior.
- Spread
- how wide the strum is in time
- Gate
- how long notes are held
- Swing
- groove and rhythmic feel
- Humanize
- natural timing variation
- Velocity Mode
- how dynamics are applied
- Time Division
- rhythmic grid resolution
- Chord Window
- how played notes form chords
- Restart Mode
- how patterns retrigger
- Latch
- sustain playback without holding notes
Upgrade to Pro
Lite covers the full strumming workflow. Pro adds a per-step control lane for velocity, gate, and trigger probability.
- Per-step velocity lane. Draw dynamics across the pattern one step at a time.
- Per-step gate lane. Set how long each note holds, individually per step.
- Per-step trigger probability lane. Control when each step fires to add natural variation.
- Pro expansion packs. Additional content released after launch.