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 an audio file from Files (mp3 and most other common audio formats are supported).
JustChords tries to detect the name and key from the filename automatically.
Review and adjust the name or key if needed, then tap Save.

Managing your pads

Search the library by name.
Tap a pad to edit its name or key.
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 — you have at least one pad in your library (or one chosen for this song). Tapping will play it, retuned if needed to match the song's key.
Active — the pad is currently playing.
Inactive — your pad library is empty.

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. It isn't available when running JustChords as an Audio Unit (AUv3) plug-in.

Choosing a pad for a song

By default, JustChords picks the closest-matching pad in your library and retunes it to the song's key — 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. (This section only appears once you've imported at least one pad.)

You can also long-press the Tonic Pad quick button to jump straight to this same picker for the current song, without opening the Song Editor.

How pad matching works

Pads are matched to a song by key, using the song's key after transposition.
JustChords doesn't require an exact match: it picks whichever pad in your library needs the smallest pitch shift to reach the song's key, then retunes it in real time (up to a tritone, i.e. up to 6 semitones in either direction).
Because of this, a single imported pad can back a song in any key. Importing one recording per key still gives the cleanest sound, since less pitch-shifting means less audible artifacting — but it's no longer required.
If your pad library is empty, 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.