Effortless songwriting
O Songcraft is the first all-in-one online platform for songwriters & writing a song has never been so easy
GABE Grazier G’Sell is the founder & CEO of Songcraft, an online songwriting platform and tab builder. The app combines an intuitive workspace with integrated tools and real-time collaboration to produce the ultimate creative songwriting platform.
Songcraft puts your lyrics, chords, tabs, and recordings all in one place, with features like chord recognisation, easy tab builder, built-in dictionary and collaboration features.
How to write your first song with Songcraft
The first step is to create a new song with the song creator, where you’ll work on your lyrics and chords. In the song creator interface, the editor on the left allows you to see the syllable count as you write your lyrics.
In songwriting, lyric setting is the process of placing lyrics in the context of musical rhythm so that the lyrics go with the music’s rhythm to preserve the natural shape of the language and promote natural rhythm, meaning and emotion.
On the right of the editor is the built-in dictionary. Under the dictionary, there are three tabs – rhymes, synonyms, and related words – so that you’ll always find the perfect word.
In the editor, you can also work on your chords. You can do so by typing the key you want above your lyrics and it will be in blue. Once you write your first set of chords down, Songcraft will automatically detect what key your song.
Since it recognises chords automatically, you can also transpose all of the chords in your song with one click.
There is also the chord explorer function where you can explore all the chords that will sound cohesive in the key your song is in.
When you click on the chords, you can even hear what they sound like and even drag them to your song. With the progression generator function, Songcraft gives you thousands of chord progressions for you to choose from, which you can randomise and cycle through.
This helps a lot when you’re out of ideas or just need a fresh idea. When you play it through and like what you hear, the pro version even allows you to save them for later. If not, you can just write them down or drag them to the editor.
Another cool feature in the editor is that you can hover over the chords and it’ll show you the guitar finger placements for the chord. You can click on the buttons below to see what kind of string instruments you want to play it on too.
Tab building
With Songcraft, you can insert tabs right into your song with Easy Tab Builder for your sixstring. Within your song editor, you’ll see a blue Insert Tab icon to the right of any selected line where you can add your tabs. By default, it would be a guitar tab in standard tuning.
The Easy Tab Builder allows you to play any chord on guitar, ukulele, mandolin, banjo, in any tuning you want. You can easily navigate around the staff with your arrow keys, adding hammer-ons, pull-offs, or bends without having to tab your guitar solos with countless hyphens.
Songcraft is for all songwriters from beginners to advanced. If you’re just getting started, Songcraft provides the tools you need to write your first song, and if you’re an experienced songwriter, the app can help you manage your songwriting process.
Teamwork makes the dream work
Since collaboration is an integral part of Songcraft, the platform supports real-time collaborative editing, shared recordings, commenting, text chat and even video chat. Just like a Google doc, you can invite cowriters by email or share a view-only link.
In August last year, they introduced Version History, which was one of the most commonly requested features. With Version History, songwriters won’t have to maintain several versions of a song until they narrow in their final cut. Instead, they will now have the confidence and freedom to write and re-write their songs and they won’t have to worry about their cat walking over their keyboard and messing up their song either.
Need to capture that melody idea before you forget it? Songcraft even has a built-in audio recorder. Upload a recording, attach an external demo, or even record a new clip without leaving Songcraft.
Instead of spending too much time managing notes, documents, folders, and voice memos, Songcraft’s Library lets you search, tag, and organize your songs all in one place. Attach a demo from your computer, Soundcloud, Spotify or Youtube.
Since Songcraft runs right in your browser on any device, you don’t even need to download an app. Your work is saved automatically and instantly.
With the basic free plan, you can write up to five Songs and get one rotating weekly exercise that changes every Monday. With just $5 (~RM 21) a month, Songcraft’s pro version will allow you to write unlimited songs, get access to 15 interactive songwriting exercise videos, and gives you the ability to collaborate.