Build Your Guitar Song
Create, customize and play your own guitar song.
1. CHORD SEQUENCE ⊕ ⊕ Drag to reorder
2. CHORD LIBRARY
3. YOUR MELODY (Optional)
4. PLAYING STYLE
5. STRUMMING PATTERN
How the guitar song builder works
This page is a small arranging studio. You choose a chord progression, decide how long each chord rings, set a strumming pattern and a tempo, and hear it back through the same acoustic guitar voice as the simulator. The order below is the one that gets a playable song fastest.
Start with a key and three or four chords
Pick a key before you pick chords, because chords borrowed from the same key sound like they belong together. G–D–Em–C, C–G–Am–F and Em–C–G–D cover a large share of pop and folk songs. The library holds 31 chords across major, minor, seventh, suspended and added families, each one playable before you add it, so you can audition a change instead of guessing at it.
Give each chord one, two or four bars
A bar is four beats at the current tempo. One bar per chord is brisk and drives forward; two bars is the pop default and leaves room to breathe; four bars lets a chord ring under a melody or a held vocal line. The setting applies to the whole progression or per chord, which is how a verse and a chorus can end up at different speeds.
Write the strumming pattern as strokes
The pattern is a row of strokes: a down arrow for a downstroke, an up arrow for an upstroke, and a hand for a mute — the strings are damped rather than left ringing, which is the percussive lift behind reggae, funk and most pop choruses. Basic and Down-Up are the two to learn first. Pop drops in muted off-beats, Slow spreads the strokes out. Choose Custom and add or remove strokes to build your own; whatever you end up with repeats once per bar.
Choose what the right hand does
Full Strum hits all six strings together: the rhythm-guitar sound most beginners picture. Down / Up alternates for a lighter, faster feel. Arpeggio rolls the strings one after another, which is the sound of ballads and fingerpicking songs. Individual plucks one string at a time, so a chord can sit quietly under a melody you are still learning.
Add the melody on top, last
The melody line spans C3 to G5 — about three octaves. Add notes from the picker, or load a tune from the melody library and keep the notes you like. Notes that belong to the chord sound settled; the ones between them, such as D over a C chord, push the line forward. Hum the phrase first and then find those notes on the picker — hunting note by note takes far longer.
Set the tempo, then preview and record
90 BPM is a safe starting point; drop to 60 or 70 while the changes are still new. Loop the progression and play along until you can change chords without looking. Recording uses the same Karplus–Strong guitar engine as the simulator, so the WAV you download is what you just heard, and the scope selector decides whether that is the current line, the lines you picked or all of them.
Save lines to turn a loop into a song
A saved line is a snapshot of the progression exactly as it stands, including its tempo and pattern. Save the verse, clear the sequence, build the chorus, save that too, then use Play All in the saved-lines panel to hear them back to back. Two loops and a repeat is already a song structure.
A good first session: G–D–Em–C at 90 BPM, one bar each, Basic strum. Change one thing at a time — the pattern, then the style, then the tempo — so you can hear what each one actually does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Add chords to the sequence from the Chord Library, choose a strumming pattern of down, up and mute strokes, set your tempo and how many bars each chord lasts, then press Play Progression. The builder strums each chord for you with realistic string timing so you can hear the whole arrangement before you play it yourself.
The pattern is a repeating series of strokes spread evenly across each chord. Down and up strokes strum the strings in opposite directions, and mute produces a percussive damped hit. Choose Whole Progression to use one pattern throughout, or Customize Per Chord to give individual chords their own strumming pattern.
Yes. Open the Song Library panel, search for a title and click it. The builder loads that song's tempo, builds a chord progression that fits its key, and loads the song's melody so you hear the actual tune strummed over the backing chords. Everything stays fully editable afterwards.
The Chord Library covers major, minor, 7th, sus and add chord families, and you can filter by category or search by name. Each row has a play button that previews the chord on its own, and a plus button that appends it to your sequence, so you can audition a chord before committing it to the song.
Turn on Loop in the preview card so the progression repeats continuously, then start at a slow BPM and play along on a real or virtual guitar. Raise the tempo a few BPM at a time as the chord changes get comfortable. The chord chip that is currently sounding is highlighted, which makes it easy to see the change coming.