Songwriter - Write lyrics and record melody ideas on the go App Reviews

As a songwriter Ive got numerous books, text files, and scrap papers with songs or parts of songs on them. Keeping them organized can be a bit of a pain. Organization and creativity dont seem to go hand in hand. Thankfully this little app goes a long way toward helping with the organization which is actually very important in the creative process. "Notating" your song with chords is incredibly simple and all your songs are available at the click of a button and are easily edited without the need for constant saving. The recording function is basic but really all you need for sketching out a song and I like that you can record different sections independently. This program wont do more than that but its a great tool for songwriting and for me beats the heck out of a pad and paper and recording ideas on my phone. Might be a bit expensive for some but I found the price to be reasonable. If youre a songwriter Id definitely recommend this to you.

This is a well-thought-out and nicely designed app that does its thing very well. For the songwriter who just wants an easy way to capture ideas in an organized way, this is perfect.

Badly over priced for the very limited functionality that it offers. Extremely disappointing!

After a recent update to the app, I lost all the data to my completed songs. All of my work completely disappeared! This app has seriously failed me. To think I paid good money for this garbage! You guys really screwed me here!

I bought this app after having used the iOs version. Th iOs version is much more easier, complete, intuitive, and cost a fraction of this one In the Mac App you have to put the chords writing them, instead of picking them from a library as you can do in the iOs one. You can not choose from a set of chords you already used in the song. There is non Chord library… nothing. Is just a notepad to write songs that recognizes chords into brackets… for 8,99€!! I hope they will soon develop this app in the right way; I wrote them months ago but quite nothing changed in this way You can not sincronize the songs from this app to the mobile one (nor between mobile apps…) they are all separate excepting for a dropbox folder you can use but hard to do. You have to buy 3 different apps (Normal, HD for iPad and Mac) and they do not communicate easily...

I just downloaded this and all that comes up is a white window. So i went to the website to contact Simon Tocknell for support, but their website has no record of this app. Im not sure if the website hasnt been updated yet or if this current app is a fake developer. I would like to recieve help or possible a refound.

I just bought this ten dollar app, and all that comes up is a white window… It doesnt work.

I also bought it and also it just gives me a white screen and thats it. I have no idea how to fix this or why it is like this. Dont buy this app its worthless.

I originally gave a negative review because I (stupidly) couldnt figure out how to reorder the sections of my songs. I have since figured it out. A few suggestions from my work with it so far. Id like to have the ability to click and drag sections of the song around from within the main writing window, without having to click on the section settings button. Id also like to see the section that I have selected in settings be highlighted when I am about to drag it around. Thanks!

I took a chance and purchased this and the iPad app. The iPad app is much more polished and feature-rich, but this app (which costs more) needs some work. Chord input is very clunky and there is no, far as I can tell, autosync feature. The iPad version includes dropbox integration, which is great, but would be better if both versions stayed in sync. There is also no rhyming dictionary like the iPad offers. Sheesh. Figuring things out is also frustrating -- the app strives to be simple and, I think, beautiful, but it is not always intuitive. So far no crashes or anything of concern and, for now, this will be a good (and less expensive) tool to replace the now dated MasterWriter. I appreciate the authors work and ideas and encourage him to continue working on this app -- I would love to give it 5 stars.

HOWEVER, it has crashed on me twice, both times were when I was using a feature for the first time; when I tried to record something, and also when I tried to access the song setting. It opened right back up though and nothing was lost and it hasn’t happened since so I have most of my trust back. My biggest issues with this app though are that it is not very compatible with iPhone or iPad versions, and also that it does not export songs very well at all. Please allow the iOS versions to sync automatically with each other as well as this one, please. Please. PLEASE. I come up with song ideas on the fly all the time and having the app on my phone is great, but then I just have to redo it all again when I get home to my Mac. What happens is I’ll do more work on the song on my Mac and then I’ll think of more when I’m away from it but then the updated version of the song isn’t on my phone so I have to try to remember and rewrite it all, plus redo the melody recordings again as well…….. HUGE inconvenience. Auto-syncing would be simply phenomenal. Pertaining to the exporting issue, whenever I back up the songs to DropBox I can only view them by uploading them into the app… I did this from my iPhone to iPad and it worked, but when I try to view them using another viewing app (even one designed to read zipped files, which I wish they wouldn’t export zipped at all…) it doesn’t work at all. ALSO, when I tried to import the songs in my DropBox to the version of this app on my Mac, it wouldnt work at all. So what I did then was exported them from my iOS by email, but then I could only view them within the email AND I lost all the audio recordings too which are a crucial part of the export; I then spent an hour and a half typing in all the lyrics to my songs, and still haven’t gotten around to getting the melodies re-recorded…. So these are two issues that are fairly basic and simple, yet detract GREATLY from the value and functionality of this potentially incredible app. Overall though, it really is a great tool for songwriting and I enjoy it’s simplicity and effectiveness. The recording ability for melodies is one of the biggest selling points for me. The minor crashes terrified me at first and almost tempted me to get a refund, but for the most part it has been a reliable app for a while now and I trust it enough to keep my ‘goldmine (to me) of ideas stored in it. The lock code feature is great on iOS versions and should be added to the MacBook version as well! I really hope people are reviewing and responding to these reviews, I’d definitely like to reccomend this app to more friends but I’d really like to see it reach its full potential first. Thanks a lot, keep up the good work.

I’ve been using this app for a good half year or so and up until recently it’s been working fine for me. However, maybe it’s because they’ve not yet released an update in a while, especially now that Mavericks is out, but my app seems to be very buggy. Songs are unable to be selected half of the time, and when I *can* select them it’s hit or miss whether my text and chords appear or if I’m shown a blank page with nothing on a song I’ve spent many hours working on. I’m also curious about the new UI. The one shown in the images for the app on this page look amazing, I really love the wooden look and the design has a nice aesthetic to it. However, I tried redownloading just to confirm and yes, it seems like what’s pictured isn’t what you get; just a bland, white and blue theme with some basic drop down functions for organizing your songs. In short, it was a really good app for songwriters, and I feel like it could be again if the devs are able to get out a more recent update and maybe some more options for aesthetics (color, theme layout, etc.) Edit: After doing some digging I’m not even sure the devs are updating this anymore. I can’t find word of it on their website, and both the mobile and desktop versions of this haven’t been updated in months. Always disappointing to purchase something only to have the creators move on and leave you hanging :/

Missing a lot of great features. No Sync. No transpose. No importing sheet music. I use the ipad app also. It works better than this app. I don’t think it’s worth the money. I can acomplish the same thing with Microsoft Word in less time. Get Songhub.