Different ways in.
The same curiosity.

Find chords that fit, shape the parts of the song, and write melodies in a key

Writes songs or pieces and wants chords, structure and melodies that work.

Start here: Choose the key in the toolbar, then click a bar on the Chords row.

• Chords and key. Click a bar and the menu offers the chords that usually follow the previous one, each with its Roman numeral and what it does in the key.
• Circle of fifths. See how the keys and the chords of your key connect, and click a key to hear its chord.
• Song sections. Drag across bars to mark an intro, verse, chorus or bridge. The structure guide shows twelve typical structures and gives advice on yours.
• Piano roll. Draw, move and resize notes with snap, and switch on the scale filter so every note stays in key.
• AI co-writer. Ask for a chord progression, melody, bassline or drums in your key, tempo and chords. It runs through Ollama on your own computer, which you install yourself with a model.
• Chord sheets. Save the chords as pages to print, for piano, guitar or both.
• To your DAW. Drag a clip into Logic, Ableton or any other DAW as MIDI, with the tempo and key.

Also useful: Rhythm guide, Recording from a MIDI keyboard.

Write words that match the melody and the shape of the song

Writes words and wants them to fit the music.

Start here: Open the Lyrics row, then read the lyrics guide.

• Lyrics editor. Write the whole text the way lyrics are written: one sung line per line, an empty line between verses, [Verse] or [Chorus] above a verse and hyphens for syllables.
• Lyrics guide. The guide covers how lyrics are written, with a look at your own song.
• Sections. Mark the parts of the song, and each verse of your text lands on its section.
• Sing this. Hear the words sung. A strip names notes without words and syllables without notes, and can adjust a copy of the notes to match the words. English only, and you add the voice yourself.
• Detect lyrics. Turn a vocal recording into timed lyrics, English only. The models (Small, 488 MB, or Medium, 1.5 GB) download once and run on your computer.

Also useful: Sing along.

See and hear what the level, the tone and the space of every track are doing

Balances level, tone and space, and wants to know what each control does to the sound.

Start here: Click Mixer in the transport bar (Cmd+2).

• Gain staging. The device bar draws the level at every step of a track's chain, and a ! points at what to check.
• Buses and sends. Group tracks into a bus with its own effects, fader and meter, and send tracks to a shared reverb or delay.
• Signal flow. The whole mix as one live map, with a level on every line, and the path of the selected track lit up.
• EQ. Six bands over the spectrum of your track, starting points per instrument, and Find a bad frequency.
• Compressor. The curve to drag, a view of what it turned down, Hear what it removes and Match level.
• Gate. Close the gaps between notes to remove hiss, hum and bleed.
• Stereo. Make the low end mono below a frequency you choose, with a gradual crossover, and set the width above it.
• Tune. See how many cents sharp or flat a vocal is, and move each note towards the key a little or a lot.
• Reverb and delay. Put a sound in a room, and set echoes that fit the song's tempo.
• Saturation and distortion. Warmth, grit and fuzz, with the reason for each.
• Your own plugins. Load VST3 plugins, and Audio Units on macOS only.

Also useful: The effect chain, What is sound?.

Play along with real chords, and learn from recordings

Plays piano or guitar and wants to play along, learn songs by ear and practise.

Start here: Open the example song and click Play along next to Chords (Cmd+4).

DawIt records MIDI from a keyboard, not sound from a microphone, so your playing is recorded as notes, not as audio.

• Play along. The chord playing now, large enough to read from across the room, with the next chord beside it and a capo for guitar.
• Tuner. Tune a guitar, bass or ukulele with the note and a needle, and check that the open strings fit the key of your song.
• Open chord track. Under each chord, a keyboard or a guitar chord box for the whole song.
• Chord guide. Every chord on piano and guitar, with its inversions, easier shapes and a capo for hard chords.
• Detect chords. Find the chords of a recording, bar by bar, and play along with them.
• Audio to MIDI. Turn a melody or bass line into notes you can see and play back.
• Karaoke and stems. Take out the part you play, to play in its place. Stems split the band into tracks.
• Chord sheets. Print the chords with diagrams.
• Score view. Read a MIDI part as sheet music, and print it as a PDF to play from.

Also useful: Rhythm guide, Recording from a MIDI keyboard.