There’s a certain joy I feel when I open an app for the first time, and I notice that the developer has hit it out of the park in regards to design and user interface. This is the feeling I had years ago when first trying Thomas Grapperon’s app Chord! I’m happy to say that I received a similar feeling when beta testing Grapperon’s new songwriting app, SongKit.
SongKit is a fantastic tool, no matter where you’re using it. If you’re sitting down to write a song on your iPad, the landscape view is beautiful and has everything you’d ever need for a productive songwriting session. The iPhone app is also a great option for jotting a song idea down, wherever you are. So what makes SongKit different from other songwriting apps on the App Store?
You can think of SongKit as a super powered, musician-focused songwriting text editor. And the difference from other songwriting apps I’ve tested over the years are significant. SongKit is way more than just a nice coat of paint.
You can write lyrics, chord charts, and even tab. The power comes in when using notations. Right now there are chord chart and tablature notations, and it seems like more will be on the way in future updates of the app! You can use multiple voices in a song, and in my testing of the app, found that if you had two voices (guitar and piano) you could switch back and forth, and the chord diagrams would adjust accordingly - a really nice touch. If you’re using the app live or for practice, there’s a helpful autoscroll option that scrolls the song depending on your preferences.
You also have a built in Harmonia voicing engine, that makes it easy to transpose songs quickly, while retaining all the important information of the original song.
The most wild thing to me is how much work has gone in to creating smart keyboards for each part of music that you’re working on. You’ll notice a full toolkit whether you’re editing tab, working on a chord, or if you’re looking for a chord suggestion based on the key of the song. I can’t stress this part of the app enough, as whatever the developer is doing under the hood seems like magic. He’s taken the best of what came from Chord! and dropped it right into SongKit.
The chord charts are very informative, showing the type of chord, how to play it, and the qualities of the notes in the chord. And when you’re editing a chord if you’ve made a mistake, you can choose to fix only that chord, or all the subsequent chords in the whole document. This makes editing really powerful.
There are so many options, and the UI is so iOS-centric, that it feels something like the Reddit client Apollo. An app that truly feels like it was made not only for iOS, but iOS 14. Taking advantage of the new OS, the app has a widget that allows you quick access to your most recent songs. There are also little touches like the ability to change the color of the app theme, light and dark modes, and a handful of custom app icons.
When you’ve finished creating a song, you can export it using a beautiful built in style for the PDF, or create your own unique style. Grapperon mentions that the app has “auto avoidance” so no matter what you include in your song, you can always make sure that it’ll be re-scaled intelligently. I’ve noticed that the PDFs I’ve exported look great, and look like something that I’d be confident in putting in front of any musician.
The songs can be stored on your phone or in a number of cloud based locations. I used iCloud as a back end to store all of my songs, and the sync worked perfectly. So whether I was on my phone or tablet, I could pick up where I left off. Grapperon has also done some magic with his Import Into SongKit extension, which makes it easy to import songs from websites. If you’re using an iPad, you can drag and drop a song right from the browser, right into SongKit.
I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t do SongKit justice in a simple app review. You have to try the app out for yourself to see just how powerful it really is. I can only imagine how much of a monumental task creating this app must have been, because it is so feature rich.
One thing I can say after having used Grapperon’s previous app for years, is that he’s always updated it with exciting new features, and he really does listen to customer feedback. I’m so excited to see what he does next for SongKit in future updates. I’m hoping for things like audio or midi playback, or even Apple Music playback alongside of a song.
SongKit is an app that every songwriter can use, and one that I’ll be using extensively from now on!