Songwriter's Drawer: Lyrics

Every song you are working on lives in pieces. The melody is a voice memo called "New Recording 47". The words are in a notes app. The chords are a photo of a napkin. Songwriter's Drawer puts the pieces back together: one drawer for your song ideas, one page per song, holding its takes, lyrics, chords, videos and every draft along the way.

Capture it before it goes
Tap the button and you are recording within seconds. Hum a melody, type a line, photograph a notebook page, speak the words, or film yourself playing it. Hold the app icon on your home screen to start any of them without opening the drawer first.

A recorder tuned for singing
Takes are recorded at 192 kbps, 44.1 kHz, with echo cancellation, noise suppression and automatic gain switched off. Those are built for phone calls, and they flatten a sung note. Name each take - verse, chorus, bridge - so you can find it again.

Sing from the screen
When a song already has words, the recorder shows them under the level meter, chords included, so you can sing the next take straight from your latest draft.

Film the idea
Film yourself playing it with your phone's own camera, up to three minutes a clip. Videos get their own tab on the song page, beside the takes and the lyric drafts, and share like any other file.

Your handwriting, typed back
Photograph a page of lyrics and get editable text. Words the reading was unsure of are marked, so you correct them instead of finding a line you never wrote.

Sing it and get the words
Speak or sing your lyrics and have them written down. Recorded a guitar part and sang over it? Ask for the words off that take as well. The take stays, and the words wait for you to correct them before they join the song.

Chords over the words
Place chords above the exact word they belong to, the way a chord sheet reads. Pick from the chords the song already uses, drag one onto a held syllable, and transpose the whole song up or down. When you edit the lyrics, the chords move with their words.

Every draft kept
Start a new version whenever you rewrite, give it a name, and restore any earlier one. Play the first take of a song straight into the newest with "Hear it then and now" and hear how far it has come.

A tidy drawer
Play a take straight from its tile without opening the song. Search every lyric and title. Cleanup walks you through the songs that have gone quiet, one at a time, and puts them away in the archive rather than deleting them.

Private when you want it
Lock the whole drawer, or a single song, behind your fingerprint, face or screen lock.

Writes in any direction
Every field follows the text you actually type, so a Hebrew or Arabic lyric right-aligns itself inside an English interface, line by line.

Share without watermarks
Send the lyrics, a single take or a video through your phone's share sheet. Nothing is added to it - no watermark, no advert.

Works offline
Your songs live on your phone. Recording, writing, chords, versions, playback and search all work with no signal. Only reading a photographed page and writing down a sung take need a connection, and only when you ask for them.

Always yours
"Get a copy of everything" packs every song, lyric, take and video into a single file you can keep anywhere. It is part of the free app and always will be. No account is needed to use Songwriter's Drawer.

Songwriter's Drawer Pro
The free app includes a monthly allowance of pages read and takes written down. Pro removes the limit and backs up your songs, lyrics, chords, takes and videos, so the whole drawer comes back on any phone you sign in on. Backups wait for wifi unless you allow mobile data, and one tap brings every take down to your phone before a flight. The yearly plan starts with a 7-day free trial.

Privacy
No ads, and no advertising ID. The app reports which features get used and when it crashes - never a title, a lyric, a search or a file name.

Questions and ideas: songwriters-drawer@baansoftware.com

Recent changes:
• Takes keep playing while you write
• Easier chord editing and dragging
• Capo support
• Smoother auto-scroll
• Bug fixes