Song Cage on iPhone and Android is a different kind of Song Cage. The desktop app and the plugin give you the full writing canvas; the mobile app gives you a deliberately small one: a free tool for capturing a melody, a line, or a chord shape the moment it arrives, wherever you are. This chapter covers what it captures, how its tabs work, and how those captures travel to the full editor to become songs.
What you'll learn
- Why the mobile app is a capture tool, not the full editor, and how that relates to the desktop app
- Where to download it, and that it is free with no account required
- The Record tab: voice memos, dry by default, with optional chord backing
- How to rename a take, and move one into another idea or into a new idea of its own
- The Lyrics tab: a section scratchpad with rhymes, slant rhymes, synonyms, and the Explore tools
- The Chords tab: sketching a progression on guitar or piano, with suggestions but never canned progressions
- How to give a single chord its own length, or set the length for a whole section
- The Ideas tab: where your captured ideas live, how to start a new one, name it, and manage it
- The Songs tab: playing and performing the finished songs you built on the web or desktop, right from your phone
- Capturing as a guest, signing in to sync, and deleting your account
- How captures move from your phone to the Ideas Inbox on the web and desktop
The last two chapters put the full Song Cage canvas in new places: your dock, and a track in your DAW. This chapter is the exception. The mobile app is the one surface that is not the full editor, and that is the point of it. You don't arrange a song on a phone screen on the subway. What you can do is capture the fragment before it's gone: hum a melody into the mic, thumb out a couplet, tap in the four chords you just found on the guitar. The mobile app is built for exactly that, and the first thing it tells you sums up the split: mobile is the capture, desktop is the nurture.
21.1 What the mobile app is
The Song Cage mobile app (on the App Store and Google Play as Song Cage: Capture Song Ideas) is a free, phone-shaped capture app. In place of the timeline, palettes, and panels of the desktop editor, it has five tabs along the bottom. Three of them capture a fragment: Record, Lyrics, and Chords. The Ideas tab is where every fragment you capture lives, each one gathered into a single thing called an idea. The Songs tab holds the finished songs you built on the web or desktop, synced back to your pocket so you can play them and perform them anywhere.
That is the whole mental model. The phone captures the pieces; the full editor on the web and desktop assembles them into songs. There is no timeline on the phone, no modulation panel, no export, and no DAW. Those live where you have a keyboard, a big screen, and the time to work: see The Desktop App and the browser editor at app.songcage.com. The mobile app's job ends the moment your idea is safely captured and on its way there.
It is also, deliberately, free. There are no purchases, upgrade prompts, trials, or prices anywhere in it. The whole app is the free tier.
21.2 Getting the app
Download it from the App Store on iPhone or Google Play on Android. It is free on both, with no card and no subscription.
| Platform | Requirement |
|---|---|
| iPhone | iOS 14 or later |
| Android | Android 6 or later |
You don't need an account to use it. Open it and start capturing immediately, even offline and even before you sign in (more on that in 21.8). The first time you open it, a short three-card intro explains the capture-then-nurture idea and names the capture tabs.
21.3 The Record tab
The Record tab is for voice memos: hum a melody, sing a line, or play a phrase on a guitar. Tap the round record button and it starts capturing right away. The take is dry by default: there is no count-in and no backing track, so what you record is just your voice or instrument, with nothing else playing over it.
If the idea already has chords, you can sing over them. While you record, a pulsing Play button in the panel at the bottom starts your chord loop mid-take, so you can capture a vocal against your own progression. Tapping it is your choice, never automatic, and a metronome toggle (off by default) adds a click to that loop if you want one.
When you stop, you review the take with a waveform you can scrub, then either Discard or Save it. Saved takes stack up as labelled clips ("Recording 1", "Recording 2", and so on) in a list under the recorder, each with its own play button. Keep the app in the foreground while recording: a phone call, Siri, or switching apps will interrupt the take, though Song Cage saves what it captured rather than losing it.
Each take carries a ⋯ menu (press and hold the take's title row for the same thing) with three actions:
- Move to idea... for a take that landed in the wrong place, covered just below.
- Rename, which edits the title in place. Useful the moment "Recording 4" stops telling you anything.
- Delete, which asks first, because unlike the other two it destroys the audio.
Moving a take to another idea
It happens: you meant to start something new and sang into the idea you already had open. Move to idea... opens a sheet that fixes it.
Pinned at the top is New idea from this take, which is the common case. It lifts the take into a fresh idea that inherits the key, tempo, time signature and tuning of the one it came from, since those are what you sang against, and drops you into it. Below that is the list of your other ideas, each with the same content icons, preview line and date the Ideas tab shows, so you're picking a destination by what's in it rather than by a timestamp. Archived ideas are in the list too, sorted last: filing a new take into one is a good enough sign the idea is alive again, so Song Cage unarchives it and says so. Once there are more than eight ideas to choose between, a search field appears above the list.
Every move can be undone from the toast that follows it. A take Song Cage named for you ("Recording 2") renumbers to fit its new home, so you never end up with two takes of the same name side by side. A name you typed yourself travels unchanged, because it still means what it meant.
21.4 The Lyrics tab
The Lyrics tab is a scratchpad for words, organized into sections the way a song is. Tap + Section to add a block and start writing, then tag it a Verse, Chorus, Bridge, or other type from the section's picker. Everything you type is plain text: square brackets and other symbols are literal characters, never parsed as markup.
The reason to write here rather than in your phone's notes app is the built-in word tools. While the keyboard is up, a thin bar sits directly above it with Rhyme, Slant, and Syn (synonym) results for the word your cursor is on. Pull the full sheet up and you also get Explore, which holds Semantic Drift (a chain of related meanings you keep drilling into) and the Word Collider (which pairs words through a bridge word). The rhyme and word data is built into the app, so these lookups keep working offline.
One deliberate behavior is worth knowing: tapping a word copies it to your clipboard (you'll see "Copied!"), it does not drop into your lyric. That keeps the line you're writing intact while you browse for the word you want, then paste it yourself where it belongs. The tools speak Spanish too, via an EN/ES toggle in the full sheet.
21.5 The Chords tab
The Chords tab is where you sketch a progression. Chords appear as a strip of chips grouped by section, each labelled with its name and, when you have a key, its Roman numeral. To add one, tap the + on a section, then tap a chord from the picker lane at the bottom: scrolling the lane auditions each chord so you hear it before you commit. (Tapping a chord on its own only previews it; you place it against a target.)
You build voicings on a guitar fretboard or a piano keyboard (toggle at the top right, guitar by default), and Song Cage names the chord from the shape you tap in. Scrolling through alternate voicings auditions them; the change is written to the chord only when you tap Apply or Replace.
Chords can be dragged along the strip to reorder them, and a chord dragged past a section boundary joins the section it lands in.
How long each chord lasts
Tap a chord to select it, then tap the ⋯ that appears on it. Alongside the extensions, the menu has a Length row: ½, 1, or 2 bars. A small note next to it reads follows section or this chord only, so you always know which of the two rules is in force for the chord you're looking at.
The section header carries the same idea at section scale. The bars-per-chord button there cycles 1 → 2 → ½, setting the default for every chord in that section that hasn't been given a length of its own. Set the section to two bars for a slow verse, then hand one passing chord half a bar without disturbing the rest.
These lengths are not decoration on the phone. They drive playback and the Record tab's backing, and they travel with the sketch when it reaches the timeline in the full editor, so a progression that breathes the way you sketched it still breathes when you build the song.
True to the rest of Song Cage, the Suggested tab offers theory, not presets. It ranks individual next chords by how well they lead from the ones around them (long-press one for a plain-language reason why), and it never hands you a canned, pre-built progression. A Triads · 7ths · Lush dial on the lane re-voices those same suggestions at three richness levels: flip it while you're auditioning a chord and the app replays that chord in its new voicing, so you can compare a plain triad against a seventh or a ninth entirely by ear. The dial shares its setting with the desktop palette, so set it once and both surfaces speak your dialect. If you don't have a key yet, Wander mode lets you roam chromatically, with a dice button for a random chord, and once you've placed a couple, a Sounds like pill offers to lock in the key it hears. A play button runs the progression back, with a Strum or Arp feel.
21.6 The Ideas tab
Everything you capture is saved as an idea, and the Ideas tab is where all of them live. A single idea can hold all three kinds of fragment at once: lyrics, a chord sketch, and voice memos. When it spans more than one, Song Cage just calls it a mixed idea. Each row shows small icons for what's inside, a one-line preview (the first lyric line, or the chord names, or "2 voice memos"), and when you last touched it. Tap a row to open that idea in whichever tab suits it.
A New idea button starts a fresh capture. It's here in the Ideas tab, and also as a + next to the title in the top bar, so you can begin a new idea from any tab the moment inspiration lands, rather than adding to the idea you were last on. If the idea you're on is still empty, Song Cage keeps you there instead of stacking up blank ideas.
Two pills at the top switch between Inbox (everything current) and Archived. Archiving an idea tucks it out of the way without deleting it, and you can restore it later. Deleting is permanent and removes the idea's lyrics, chords, and recordings together, so Song Cage asks you to confirm first.
Press and hold a row to name it. The title becomes editable in place, right where it sits in the list. Ideas start life named after the moment you captured them ("6:24pm"), which is honest but forgettable, and a name is what turns a list of timestamps into a list of songs. Holding an auto-named idea opens the field empty with the timestamp greyed out behind it, so naming one is typing rather than deleting first.
Each row also has a ⋯ menu holding the same Rename, plus Archive (or Restore, in the Archived pill) and Delete.
You finish ideas elsewhere, not here. The mobile Ideas tab is for starting, browsing, archiving, and housekeeping; turning an idea into a song happens in the full editor, covered in 21.9.
21.7 The Songs tab
The Songs tab is the one tab that doesn't capture anything. Instead it's where your finished songs come to life on your phone: once you've built a song in the full editor on the web or desktop, it syncs down here, so the arrangement you assembled at your desk rides along in your pocket. Tap a song to open its chord sheet, and it does more than sit there for reading.
Tap Play and the song sounds from the top: the chords strum in time, and if the song has a melody, it plays right along with them. As it goes, the line you're on lights up and the sheet scrolls itself to keep that line centered, so you can read along hands-free. It plays exactly as you built it on the computer, down to the key, capo, tempo, and tuning. Tap again to stop, and leaving the screen stops the sound too.
When you'd rather play the song yourself, tap Autoscroll to turn the sheet into a hands-free teleprompter. Nothing sounds this time: the page simply scrolls at the song's own tempo, so the words and chords arrive right as you'd sing and play them, with a reading line sitting about a third of the way down. A speed control lets you trim the pace, from half speed up to double, if the built-in tempo runs fast or slow for you, and the screen stays awake so it won't dim or lock mid-song. Rest a finger on the sheet to pause, lift it to pick up where you left off, and tap Done to step back to the plain sheet.
Editing and arranging still happen on the big screen, so this view is for playing and performing, not reworking. Both Play and Autoscroll are free: all you need is to be signed in so your songs sync down. Songs a bandmate shared with you appear here too, marked Shared.
An empty Songs tab just means you haven't assembled a full song yet. That's what the editor is for, and anything you build there lands here on its own, ready whenever you want to play it back or perform it away from your desk.
21.8 Capturing as a guest, and signing in
You can use the whole app as a guest. Nothing is gated behind an account: record, write, and sketch chords, and they all save locally on your phone. A thin banner reading "Sync ideas to desktop" is the main nudge to sign in (there's also a Sign in option in the top-right menu), and neither one blocks anything.
Signing in is what turns on sync, so your captures back up to your Song Cage account and show up on the web and desktop. You can sign in with email and password, with Google (on Android and iPhone), or with Apple (on iPhone). The ideas you captured as a guest come with you the first time you sign in. If you signed up with Apple, the same Continue with Apple button is on the sign-in screens for the web, desktop, and plugin: it opens the same account everywhere.
If you ever want to leave, account deletion is built right in: open the menu in the top right, choose Delete account, and confirm by typing DELETE. That erases your account and everything in it, including your recorded audio, directly from the app, with no website to visit.
21.9 From capture to song
A capture isn't finished until it becomes part of a song, and that happens in the full editor, not on the phone. Once you're signed in, your ideas sync to your account and wait for you in the Ideas Inbox on the web and desktop (the Ideas tab of the right panel; see The Interface). There, each piece of an idea (a lyric line, a chord run, a melody pulled from a voice memo) can be dragged straight onto your timeline as you build the song.
The mobile app gives you one control for this handoff. When you're signed in, an Expand Your Song button opens a sheet describing what the desktop does with your captures (detect the melody inside a voice memo, suggest chords, lay everything on a timeline, export a chart) and offers to email you the link to app.songcage.com, so it's waiting when you sit down.
That is the relationship in one line: the phone is the net you carry everywhere, and the desktop is the bench where you build. For how captured ideas turn into finished songs, and how the Free and Pro tiers apply once you're in the full editor, see Getting Started and Account & Subscription.
That closes the manual. Song Cage now lives everywhere a song starts: in the browser, in the native desktop app, on a track inside your DAW as the plugin, and in your pocket. The first three give you the full canvas. The phone gives you the fastest way to capture a fragment before it's gone, then hands it to the canvas to finish. The idea behind all of them is the same: capture the song you hear, and let the tools stay out of the way. Go write something.