UpstrokeA pick moves down, then up. A bow pulls, then pushes.
The upstroke is what gives the music life, and it’s built one practice session at a time. Upstroke is here to make every session count.
iPhone · free · no account
Our mission
Help every musician practice with purpose, and hear themselves get better.
Musicians have always kept practice journals on paper: a list of tunes, a tempo in the margin, a note about what went wrong. But paper can’t play back last month’s take, tell you what you haven’t touched in weeks, or find the note you wrote in March. We think there’s a better way.
Upstroke is a practice journal that plans your sessions, tracks every tune and technique, and shows you how far you’ve come.
Plan a session that has a shape
Split your practice into sections, such as Warmup, Old tunes and New tunes. Pick how long the session runs, and Upstroke divides the time between the sections for you.
- Schedule what you'll play. Put tunes and techniques into each section before you start, or add them as you go.
- Know when to move on. You get a reminder when a section's time is up, so you can keep playing without watching the clock.
- Save your favorite plans. Keep a quick 20-minute plan and a full Saturday plan for each instrument, then start either with one tap.
- Keep the click close. A built-in metronome sits at the bottom of the screen, with tap tempo and five click sounds.
Practice like an athlete
Runners and cyclists have apps that plan their workouts and chart every gain. Upstroke brings that coaching mindset to the practice room.
Every tune and technique gets its own history: the tempo you were comfortable at, how it felt, and what you noted. Your tempos form a trend line, not a single number, so you can see a tune go from 80 to 110 over a season.
A 14-day practice graph and a gentle streak show the time adding up. There are no badges, levels or scores. Your progress is yours to read, not a game to win.
Always know what to practice next
Upstroke suggests what to play in each section, using an approach borrowed from spaced repetition. Spaced repetition is the method language apps use to bring each word back just before you’d forget it.
The suggestions change from day to day, so a big repertoire never shows you the same twelve tunes. And there’s never a backlog: after two weeks away, you see a few good picks, not a pile of overdue work.
- Struggled with a tune? It comes back soon.
- Played it with confidence? It drifts out for a while, then returns.
- Haven't touched it in months? It moves up the list, marked "not played in a while."
- Just added something new? It goes straight to the top.
Hear your progress
The clearest proof that you’re improving is your own playing. Upstroke makes recording part of every session.
Before you start a session, Home offers your most recent recording. Listen back, then pick up where you left off.
- Record any tune as you practice it. Each take is saved with that tune, so you can play last month's version next to today's.
- Capture a session take. At the end of a session, record one last run-through before you pack up.
- Keep just the good part. Trim a take to the bars that matter. The full recording is always kept, so nothing is lost.
- Hear every take clearly. Upstroke evens out the volume, so a take recorded across the room plays as loud as one recorded up close.
Your charts, right where you need them
Attach images to any tune or technique: sheet music, tabs, chord charts, or a lick scribbled on a napkin. Take a photo, or add one from your library.
Open a chart in the middle of a session and it fills the screen. Zoom in on a passage, or rotate a chart that was photographed sideways. The next time you open it, Upstroke remembers where you were reading.
A snapshot of every session
End each session with a photo. It becomes that session’s thumbnail, so your practice history reads like a photo album instead of a list of dates.
It doesn’t need to be a good photo. Random ones work best: a pile of picks, a fresh set of strings, your woodshed, a dog-eared tune book, or the new gear you couldn’t wait to try. Scroll back through a few months and each picture brings back the session.
Keep your breakthroughs
Some sessions bring a moment where something finally clicks. Maybe you figured out a fingering, a bow pattern, or why a tune never swung. At the end of every session, Upstroke asks one question: “Anything click today?”
Your answer is saved as an insight, kept apart from your everyday notes. Your insights then come back to you on the home screen, one at a time, each linked to the session where it happened. Tap to see another. Over time, they become a collection of the lessons you taught yourself.
Find anything you've ever written
One search covers everything: tunes, techniques, sessions, recordings, and every note you’ve taken. Type “crosspicking” or “left hand” and see every time it came up, across every instrument and every month.
Tag items any way you like, such as Celtic, Right hand or RockyGrass 2026. Then filter your whole library by tag in one tap.
Private by design
Your practice lives on your phone. There’s no account to create, no ads, and no sign-in. Upstroke works fully offline, so it’s as reliable in a cabin as it is at home. Read the privacy policy.
- Account
- None
- Sign-in
- None
- Ads
- None
- Internet
- Not needed
Join the Upstroke TestFlight and start your first session tonight.
Built by one musician for players of bluegrass, jazz, Celtic, old-time, and everything in between.
iPhone 12 or later · iOS 17+