How to use Melodex
Melodex is where musical ideas live — capture a moment, sketch out chords, jot down lyrics, and come back to it later. Everything lives in four tabs at the bottom: Ideas, Recordings, Chords, and Profile.
Ideas
An Idea is home for one musical thought — a riff, a vibe, a session. Inside each one you'll find tabs for Recordings, Chords, Notes, and Tags. Nothing is required; add whatever makes sense for that idea.
Archive & merge
Everything lives in the ··· menu. Archive tucks an idea away without removing it — flip the Archive toggle on the home screen to find and restore it later. Merge folds one idea's recordings, chords, notes, and tags into another — handy when two sketches turn out to be the same song. Export Audio Files emails you a download link for all the recordings inside (requires an account).
Recording
Record inside an idea, or from the global Recordings tab — either way, a live waveform shows you what's coming in. Toggle Capture Speech beforehand and the recording gets transcribed into a note the moment you stop (needs an account and internet). On the home screen, long-press any idea card to hear its latest recording without opening it.
Player
Tap any recording to open the player — it keeps going in the background, and your lock screen and headphone controls all work as expected. Skip ±15 s, loop, auto-advance, and a previous button that rewinds first before actually going back. Heart a recording to flag it as a favourite, or use the music box icon to jump straight to the idea it belongs to. AirPlay is there on iOS. The ··· menu on any row handles moving, renaming, and the rest.
Audio editor & trimming
Tap Advanced Play & Trim in the player to get into the waveform editor. Drag the IN and OUT handles to your range and tap Trim — it cuts permanently, so zoom in first if you need precision (pinch to zoom, double-tap to jump to the selection). You can play freely by tapping anywhere on the waveform, or lock playback to the selected range and loop it for a gapless repeat. Auto-follow keeps the waveform moving with the playhead so you don't lose your place.
USB audio interfaces
iOS only. Plug in a USB interface via a compatible adapter and an input selector shows up in the recording controls — pick a stereo pair or a single mono channel. It updates the moment you connect or disconnect, and falls back to the built-in mic automatically.
Progressions
Each idea can have as many progressions as you need — Verse, Chorus, Bridge, whatever fits. The pencil icon opens the chord name builder; the grid icon pulls from your saved library. Use both on the same progression if you want. Tap ⇄ to drag chords around, or use the ··· menu to reorder progressions, copy a chord sequence, and paste it somewhere else. Tap any chord to see its notes. Collapse progressions you're not working on to keep things readable.
Fretboard editor
Draw any voicing on a virtual neck — tap to place or remove a finger, drag across a fret for a barre, and tap the string name above the nut to mark it muted or open. Melodex tries to identify your shape across all 12 keys and 7 chord types; if it can't, it saves as "Custom Chord." Before saving it'll also check if you've got an identical shape in your library already, so you can reuse rather than duplicate.
Chord name builder
Sometimes you just want to write Am7 – F – C – G and move on. The chord name builder is a purpose-built keyboard for exactly that — 40+ chord qualities, no fretboard required. Transpose the whole thing by semitone in one tap, add repeat markers (×2, ×4), and drop in line breaks to lay it out like a lead sheet.
Tags
The Tags tab lets you label an idea with musical context — Key, Feel, Genre, and Instrument. Each has a list of presets to pick from, plus a + for anything custom. Back on the home screen, searching by name will also surface matching tags as chips — tap one to filter by it.
Notes & speech-to-text
A scratchpad for whatever's in your head — lyrics, a tempo, a chord idea, a reminder to yourself. It saves as you type. If you recorded with Capture Speech on, the transcription lands here automatically.
Sync
Melodex works completely offline — no account needed to get started. Sign up with email or Google to add cloud backup, sync across devices, speech-to-text, and audio export by email. Everything you've already captured gets merged into your account when you sign in — nothing is lost. Sync happens automatically on sign-in, or you can trigger it anytime from Profile → Sync Data. On a new device, just sign in and sync and it all comes back. To get an idea's audio files in your inbox, open it → ··· → Export Audio Files.