How it works

Three things have to be true for a songwriting app to be worth opening: catching an idea must be faster than losing one, nothing you catch may ever be quietly thrown away, and coming back months later must show you what you actually had.

One

Capture, before the idea goes

  1. Hold the button and sing it

    One press on the capture button and the recorder is already running. The take is written down before the first byte of audio arrives, so a crash leaves you a recording rather than nothing.

  2. Or say it, or write it, or photograph the page

    The same button opens a row of five: record, speak, write, photograph, film. Speak the words and they come back written down; a photographed page of handwriting comes back transcribed as written, crossings-out and all.

  3. It lands in the drawer

    Whatever you captured belongs to a song from that moment. Add to it later and everything stays together: takes, videos, every draft, and the chords sitting over the words.

  4. Come back and hear the distance

    Months later, play the first take and the newest one back to back. That comparison is the thing a folder of voice memos can never give you.

The capture button is where your thumb already is. Press it and five options unfold in a row, closest first; hold it and it goes straight to whichever one you chose in settings. On the home screen, holding the app icon offers all five without opening the app at all.

Two

Everything about one song, in one place

A song page pins the current lyrics at the top, with its history underneath in three: Versions for the words, Sounds for the takes, Videos for what you filmed. All of them read newest first.

A take is a moment, and moments are append-only: the app finishes a recording by filling in its length and its waveform and then never touches it again. That is what makes the history trustworthy — nothing in it can have been edited after the fact.

Songs carry a stage — spark, shape, structure, done — and a confidence you set yourself, from “Not sure” to “The best thing here”. The app never guesses either one. How much you believe in a song is not something software gets to infer.

Structure

Winter song

  • the window is fogged over
  • and the city goes on without me
Versions
4
Sounds
3 takes
Videos
1
Pinned lyrics on top; Versions, Sounds and Videos underneath, newest first.

Three

Come back and hear the distance

The reason for keeping every take is the comparison it makes possible.

“Hear it then and now” plays the first take and the most recent one back to back. Songwriters abandon songs because they can no longer hear what the song was for, and the only reliable witness to that is the recording made on the day. Reading an old lyric tells you what you wrote; hearing the old take tells you what you meant.

The drawer itself sorts by what you touched last, so live ideas float and dormant ones sink without being lost. Search and sorting appear once you have six songs in there, and from then on they stay.

How to finish a song you started months ago

It takes about ten seconds to try

Open it, hold the button, sing the thing you have been carrying around.

Free. No account, no advertising, and nothing to sign up for.