1Step 1. Import the demo songs

One tap, and you have a library to work with.

1. Open the Settings tab, bottom right.
2. At the top, under PRESS PREVIEW, tap Import Demo Songs.The line under the button changes to “Added the demo songs and Quick Ideas.” Tapping it again is safe: it tells you they are already there rather than adding a second copy.
3. Go to the Songs tab, bottom left.Three songs, most recently edited first: Flour on the Clock, Lot Thirty-One, Capo on the Second Fret. Under them is a Quick Ideas card with a count of 3.

The import never deletes anything. Anything you have already written stays exactly as you left it.

2Step 2. Rhymes and syllables

In Flour on the Clock: rhyme coloring, syllable counts, the rhyme dictionary and the Sketchpad.

1. Open Flour on the Clock.The lyrics are already colored. Words that rhyme with each other share a color, applied as the song was typed, the same way they will be when you type.
2. Read down the line endings of the first verse.hot and forgot share a color, hour and flour the next, tins and begins the next. There are twelve rhyme groups across the song.
3. Find line and time, the last two lines of the first verse.They share a color too, and they are not a perfect rhyme. The engine groups by sound rather than spelling, so the slant rhymes songwriters actually use are caught the same way full rhymes are.
4. Tap into any line.A bar appears above the keyboard. The capsule on the left, a waveform and a number, is the syllable count for the line you are in, and it updates as you type.
5. Tap that syllable capsule to switch the per-line counts on.A count appears in the margin beside every line and stays there until you tap the capsule again. The margin counts ship switched off, because most people do not want them on screen all the time.
6. Put the cursor in the middle of a word and tap the book icon above the keyboard.The rhyme dictionary opens already searching for the word the cursor was in. Try it on “shift” or “change”.
7. Tap … in the top bar, then Rhyme Settings, and switch to End + Internal.Rhymes inside lines color too: plays and trays in the first verse, bread and spread in the chorus. The default is End Only; set it back when you are done.
8. Tap the square and pencil icon above the keyboard.This is the Sketchpad. Scratchpad is the writer's own working note, and Comments carries a short thread, with one comment marked done.

This song has no chords, which is deliberate. Plenty of people write only words, and nothing in the app assumes otherwise.

3Step 3. Chords, tab and transposition

In Capo on the Second Fret: inline chords, Chord Sheet mode, the tab block, Change Key and the Theory tab.

1. Go back to Songs and open Capo on the Second Fret.The chords are typed into the lyric in square brackets, like [G]this. Typing the bracket is the only way to add a chord, which keeps a song plain text you can paste anywhere.
2. Tap the page icon in the top bar, to the left of the … button.Chord Sheet mode: the same song laid out for a music stand, each chord sitting above the syllable it lands on.
3. Tap any chord in that view.A diagram opens showing the fingering, and you can swipe through alternative voicings.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the song.Under the [Tab] heading is a guitar tab block in a monospaced font. It is ordinary text in the same document, so it moves and copies with the song.
5. Tap the same button, now a pencil, to return to the editor. Then … ▸ All Tools… ▸ Change Key, and tap +2 under Quick Transpose.Every chord in the song moves at once: G to A, C to D, B7 to C#7. The song is written in G and played with a capo on the second fret, so +2 shows the key it always sounded in. There is also a capo section suggesting shapes you already know. -2 puts it back.
6. … ▸ Analysis, then the Theory tab.It names the key and the progressions, flags the F as a flat seven borrowed from Mixolydian, and reads the B7 as a secondary dominant pointing at E minor. The chords were chosen so this panel has something specific to say.

4Step 4. The analysis view

On Lot Thirty-One, a song left deliberately as a first draft.

1. Open Lot Thirty-One, and read its Scratchpad note first: the square and pencil icon above the keyboard.It is a working note to self, and it admits that one line of the bridge is borrowed. The analysis will find that line on its own in a moment.
2. Close it. Tap … ▸ Analysis.Seven tabs across the top: Genre, Themes, Emotions, Rhyme Scheme, Singing, Theory, Meter. All of it is computed on the device; lyrics are never sent anywhere.
3. Open Rhyme Scheme.It reads the pattern off the song and names it, Alternating (ABAB), with how many lines rhyme and how consistently the pattern holds.
4. Open Themes and scroll past the themes card.The cliché check has flagged “one last time” in the bridge, the same line the Scratchpad note owned up to. It checks against a dictionary of roughly 840 overused phrases. On the other two songs it comes back clean, and says so rather than going blank.
5. Open Meter, then Singing.Meter reads the stress pattern line by line; this song is in strict ballad meter, eight syllables then six, so it makes a clear shape. Singing is the mouth-feel pass: which lines sit comfortably in the mouth and which fight it.
6. Tap into a line and tap the syllable capsule.The 8 6 8 6 pattern runs down the margin. Of the three songs, this is the one to see the counts on.

The Theory tab on this song shows a card explaining how to add chords, because it has none. That is the expected state for a lyrics-only draft.

5Step 5. Quick Ideas

The fragments surface, fenced off from your songs on purpose.

1. On the Songs tab, tap the Quick Ideas card.Three fragments: a bus that keeps passing the house, a line overheard on it, and a title that might be too close to another one. Quick Ideas are kept apart from songs and left out of every statistic, so a folder of scraps never inflates a word count or a song total.

6Step 6. Write something yourself

Two minutes with an empty page, which is the real test of an editor.

1. On the Songs tab, tap + and start a new song.Any four lines will do. Rhyme the second with the fourth.
2. Watch the moment you finish the rhyming word.The color arrives as you type it. Nothing is pressed, and nothing is sent anywhere to work it out.
3. Type a chord in brackets at the start of a line, like [Am].It styles itself as a chord, and the page icon in the top bar will lay it out in Chord Sheet mode.
4. Then stop typing for about five seconds.The app quietly commits a version in the background. That is also what records a writing session, which is what the Grow tab counts.

7Step 7. The Grow tab

The habit tracker, and the part of this build that needs the most caveats.

1. Tap Grow, the middle tab.Four sections down the page: Writing Rhythm, Monthly Challenges, Badge Collection and Insights.
2. Writing Rhythm is the top card.It tracks the days you wrote against a weekly target you set yourself. It counts writing sessions rather than songs, which is why step 6 ended with a pause: importing a library does not count as having written.
3. Tap through Badge Collection.Most badges are locked on a fresh install, which is exactly what a new user sees.
4. Insights will be showing a placeholder.It waits for five songs before it looks for patterns across your writing, and the import provides three. Write a couple of your own to see it wake up.

Monthly Challenges are served from my servers and are still being finalized for release. In this build you may see last month's challenge, none at all, or one that does not complete when you meet it. That is pre-release content rather than a broken feature, and it is on the list for the first update.

8Step 8. Real-time co-writing

If someone can lend you a second pair of hands for five minutes, this is the feature to spend them on.

1. Get the build onto a second device.The same TestFlight link that installed this one, on a colleague's iPhone or iPad. Co-writing is two people on two devices, so this chapter needs the helper; if nobody is around, the note below has the alternative.
2. On your device, open any song and tap … ▸ Collaborate.You will need to be signed into iCloud; the app will say so if not. A sheet appears saying Your song is live, with the link. Tap Share via… and send it to them.
3. They tap the link.The song opens on their device, with no account to create on their side. Now both of you type, and watch the same lines change on both screens as you do.

Sessions are end-to-end encrypted, so my servers never see a lyric. If nobody is around to help, email me and we will run a session together, you on your device and me on mine.