User Guide

Getting started

From My Songs, click + New Song. You'll be asked for a title, and you can invite collaborators by email at the same time (you can also do this later). New songs open with a [Verse 1] heading and a tempo of 120 BPM to get you moving.

The editor has your song in the middle, tools on the right, and the song's controls along the top. Click the ? beside the title at any time for a short reminder of how chord entry works.

Writing chords

Type your lyrics as you would in any text box. To add a chord, type it on its own line above the words — as soon as you type something that looks like a chord (G, Am, F#m7) a list of suggestions appears.

Placing a chord

• Press space to accept exactly what you typed.
• Press Tab or Enter to accept the highlighted suggestion.
• Use ↑ and ↓ to move through the list first.
• Or click a suggestion.
• Clicking away also places it, as long as that line contains only chords.

Once placed, the chord floats above the line in blue and no longer behaves like text.

Moving a chord

Put the cursor to the left of a chord and press space to push it right, one character at a time, until it sits over the syllable you want. Backspace pulls it back.

Changing a chord

Click a chord to edit it. Type to change it, then press Enter. Backspacing it away entirely removes it.

You can also extend one: with the cursor immediately after a placed C, type add9 and it becomes Cadd9.

Removing a chord

Press Backspace or Delete with the cursor in the chord — it goes in one press, and the rest of the row closes up.

Copying a row of chords

Select a chord line and copy it as normal. The chords come with it, so you can paste the same run over the next verse. It also pastes as readable text into other apps, and a chord line copied from elsewhere pastes in here as real chords.

Sections

Put a name in square brackets on its own line to mark a section:

[Verse 1]
[Chorus]
[Bridge]

It'll stand out from the lyrics around it, and print as a heading.

Key and transpose

Set the song's Key in the toolbar and the Chords tab fills with the chords that belong in that key — handy when you're reaching for the next one.

The Transpose arrows move the whole song up or down a semitone. Every chord in the song changes together.

Chord shapes

Hover over any chord — in the song or in the Chords tab — to see how to play it on guitar. Muted strings are marked ×, open strings ○, and shapes further up the neck show the starting fret.

Every chord has a shape, worked out on a standard-tuned fretboard, with the familiar open shapes used where they exist.

Progressions

The I–V tab suggests chord progressions in a key and plays them back on a plucked-string sound.

• ▶ plays the progression.
• ↻ Generate offers a different one.
• The arrows either side of the key name move it up or down.
• ★ saves one. Saved progressions are kept to your account, so they're there in every song.

Rhymes and synonyms

The Aa tab looks up words four ways: Rhymes, Synonyms, Related and Sounds Like. Click any result to drop it straight into your lyrics at the cursor.

Tuner

Click 🎸 in the toolbar. Allow microphone access, play a string, and it shows the note you're sounding and how far off you are — the dot turns green when you're in tune. Clicking a string letter plays a reference pitch.

Metronome

Set the BPM in the toolbar, then click ⏲ to start it. The first beat of each bar is accented. Changing the BPM while it's running takes effect straight away. Click again to stop.

Autoscroll

The floating Autoscroll button at the bottom of the song scrolls it past at a playing pace, so you can keep your hands on the instrument. Speeds run from 1x (about a line and a half per second) to 5x, and you can change speed while it's running. It stops on its own at the end of the song.

Saving your work

There's no save button. Your song saves a couple of seconds after you stop typing, and again if you switch away from the tab. The status beside the title tells you where things stand: Unsaved changes, Saving…, then Saved.

Writing with other people

Click Share in the top bar to invite someone by email. They'll get a message inviting them in.

Collaborators need a SongSmith account under the address you invited. If they don't have one yet, the invite waits — as soon as they sign up with that email, the song appears in their Shared with Me list.

Collaborators can open and edit the song just like you can. If someone else saved while you had the song open, you're warned before your version overwrites theirs.

As the owner you can also resend an invite or remove someone from the same Share panel.

Chat

The 💬 tab is a conversation attached to the song itself, so the discussion lives with the work. Everyone with access can read and post, and new messages appear within a few seconds.

Video calls

The 🎥 tab lists everyone who currently has the song open. Click Call to ring one of them; they get the choice to answer or decline. You'll need to allow camera and microphone access the first time.

Calls are one to one, and the video and audio travel directly between the two browsers rather than through our servers.

On some restrictive networks — office wifi and certain mobile networks especially — a direct connection can't be established, and the call will say so rather than sitting there ringing.

Recording a demo Pro

Save the song first, then open the ● tab and press Record. Recordings can run up to three minutes. Press Stop and it uploads and appears with a player underneath, where you can also delete it.

Recording is set up for music rather than speech, so sustained notes and quiet passages aren't gated out. The trade-off is that room noise isn't filtered either — record somewhere quiet for the best result.

Version history Pro

The ↻ tab keeps checkpoints of the song as you write — at most one every few minutes, up to 50 per song. Each shows when it was taken and by whom.

Restore puts that version back. It saves the current version as a checkpoint first, so restoring is itself reversible if you change your mind.

Collaborators share the owner's history, so a song owned by a Pro account keeps history no matter who is editing.

Printing

The 🖨 button in the top bar opens a clean sheet with the chords sitting over the lyrics, ready to print or save as a PDF through your browser's print dialog. Section names appear as headings.

Free and Pro

A free account includes 5 songs and every writing, collaboration and reference tool — the editor, chord shapes, progressions, the dictionary, the tuner, the metronome, sharing, chat and video calls.

Pro adds unlimited songs, demo recording and version history.

Upgrade from the Upgrade to Pro button in the top bar. Billing is handled by Stripe; we never see your card details. You can change or cancel your subscription any time from Account → Manage billing, and Pro features stay available until the period you've paid for ends.

Your account

The circle at the top right opens your account menu. From Account you can change your details and manage billing. Forgotten your password? Use the link on the login page and we'll email you a reset.

Troubleshooting

The tuner, recording or a call can't reach my microphone

Two permissions have to line up. First, your browser needs permission for this site: click the icon to the left of the address and set Microphone (and Camera, for calls) to Allow, then reload. Second, your operating system needs to allow the browser itself — on a Mac that's System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone. If you change that one, quit the browser completely and reopen it.

A chord ended up on the wrong line

Chords are tied to the line beneath them. Splitting a chord line in two by pressing Enter in the middle of it can leave the chords behind; undo, put the cursor at the start or end of the line instead, and they'll follow.

My co-writer can't see the song

They need an account with the exact email you invited. Check the spelling in the Share panel — if it still says Pending, they haven't signed up with that address yet. Use Resend to send the invite again.

A word I typed turned into a chord

Single letters like A are chord names too. Press Escape to dismiss the suggestions before continuing, or undo. On a line that has lyrics on it, clicking away won't convert anything — only lines made up entirely of chords do that.

An invite or reset email hasn't arrived

Check the spam folder first. If it's still missing after a few minutes, get in touch.

Something else

Email support@songsmith.io and tell us what you were doing when it happened.