Pad Library

The Pad Library is where you store the ambient audio pads used by JustChords. It's a general-purpose collection of looping audio tracks tagged by musical key — currently used to drive the Tonic Pad, but built to support other pad-based playback modes in the future.

JustChords doesn't ship with any built-in pads. You bring your own recordings (for example a commercial pack like Churchfront Pads, or your own ambient drones) and import them into the library.

Importing pad tracks

Open Tools in the Library sidebar and select Pad Library.
Tap the + button.
Choose one or more audio files (mp3) from Files.
JustChords tries to detect the name and key from each filename automatically.
Review and adjust the name or key if needed, then tap Done.

Managing your pads

Search the library by name.
Tap a pad to edit its name or key.
Duplicate a pad to create a variation.
Delete a pad to remove it from the library and delete its audio file.

Tonic Pad

Tonic Pad is a quick button that plays an ambient drone matched to the key of the song you're viewing.

Ready — a pad matching the song's key exists in your library.
Active — the pad is currently playing.
Inactive — no pad in your library matches the song's key.

Tap the button to start or stop the pad. While a setlist is running, the pad automatically crossfades to match each new song's key, and keeps playing uninterrupted across songs that share the same key.

Enabling the quick button

Open Settings and go to Quick Buttons.
Add Tonic Pad to your quick button bar.

Tonic Pad can also be triggered remotely, for example from a Bluetooth pedal or MIDI controller.

Choosing a pad for a song

By default, JustChords picks the pad whose key matches the song — including any transposition or capo you've applied. If you'd rather use a specific pad regardless of key, you can set it per song.

Open the song in the Song Editor.
Go to Details.
Under Tonic Pad, pick a pad from your library, or leave it on Default to auto-match by key.

How pad matching works

Pads are matched to a song by key, using the song's key after transposition.
Matching is a straight lookup — JustChords does not pitch-shift audio, so getting key-matched pads across your whole setlist means importing one recording per key.
If no pad matches a song's key and no pad is manually chosen, Tonic Pad shows as inactive.

Looking ahead

The Pad Library is intentionally kept independent of the Tonic Pad button. It's designed to grow beyond a single static drone per song — for example, playing pads that follow a song's chord progression rather than just its tonic.