---
title: 'Organize Your Song Ideas Like a Pro: A Complete Guide'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=5gVRlLjoVeI'
video_id: '5gVRlLjoVeI'
date: 2026-07-31
duration_sec: 1233
---

# Organize Your Song Ideas Like a Pro: A Complete Guide

> Source: [Organize Your Song Ideas Like a Pro: A Complete Guide](https://youtube.com/watch?v=5gVRlLjoVeI)

## Summary

This video presents a complete, three-stage system for organizing songwriting ideas: capturing ideas as they happen, developing them into drafts, and organizing finished songs for sharing. The creator shares their personal tools — Apple Notes, Voice Memos, a paper journal, and Google Drive — along with the exact folder structure they use to keep every kind of song seed findable.

### Key Points

- **Three stages of the songwriting process** [00:03] — Songwriting organization depends on where the song is: capturing ideas as they happen, developing ideas into fuller drafts, and organizing finished songs for sharing.
- **Three non-negotiable criteria for an idea app** [01:27] — The app must be fast to open and capture, handle multimedia (text, audio, video) in the same note, and be accessible across multiple devices and locations via cloud sync.
- **Why Evernote was abandoned** [03:12] — Evernote is well-suited to songwriters because notes can hold text and voice notes together, but the creator hit the free-plan note limit and found the paid pricing excessive when free alternatives exist.
- **Paper journal for developing ideas** [04:50] — The creator almost never captures initial ideas in a paper journal, but uses one for fleshing out ideas, free writing, sense writing, and lyric development when pen and paper feel best.
- **Folder system for song seeds** [05:05] — The Apple Notes 'Songwriting' folder contains separate notes for lines, titles, melodies, chords, sounds, and techniques, with each note representing a distinct kind of song seed.
- **Titles kept completely separate** [07:42] — Titles should live in a dedicated note apart from other lyrics; a good title expresses a core feeling or image and contains the DNA to become many different songs.
- **Additional organizational folders** [11:38] — The system also includes folders for sense writing, songs to analyze, and song ideas — the last being for ideas with more flesh, like a title with a story attached.
- **Stage two: developing ideas** [13:46] — During development, each song gets its own Apple Note as a workshop, with the most complete lyrics at the top and the editing/experimentation area below it.
- **Stage three: organizing finished songs** [16:37] — Finished songs are moved to Google Drive, organized by year and then by song/album, containing demo, lyrics, chord charts, and lead sheets. Master audio files go in a separate folder.

### Conclusion

A simple, labeled organization system removes friction from the creative process, so when you sit down to write, you can find the right idea quickly and get to work. The exact tools matter less than speed, multimedia support, and cross-device access.

## Transcript

what you do with it next where the real interesting songwriting stuff happens there are three distinct stages in the songwriting process and the logistics of how best to organize your ideas will really depend where your song
is in those different stages the first stage of the songwriting process is really capturing your ideas as they happen it's such a shame when you have a great Melody idea no way to capture it and you think I'll remember that in an
hour from now you know if it's good enough I'll remember it we don't want to rely on our memory to remember it an hour from now we want to capture it now so everyone is going to have a hot opinion about which is the best app or
notebook to keep store and access your song ideas so what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you what I use explain why I use these things and also the app
of choice for me has recently changed and I'll EXP explain what I used to use why I changed and what I use now my system for capturing song ideas has three components to it so the first component is my app of choice inside the
iPhone where I will collect and organize lyric ideas and other kinds of ideas I also use the simple voice memo app really for capturing Sonic ideas Melodies chord progressions sounds out in the world that sort of thing and I
also use a paper Journal so those are the the three vehicles I use for capturing ideas let's talk about apps because everyone wants to know what is there are actually lots of apps out there that are designed and marketed to
songwriters but I'm going to suggest to you that it's not really about the specific app it's really about three fundamental principles that whatever app you choose needs to have so the first one is simply that it just needs to be
fast I cannot handle apps you have to open the app sign into the app open a folder go into a subfolder within the folder go into that scroll and then finally you're allowed to capture an idea inside the app I want it to be fast
the other criteria for the app is that it must be able to handle multimedia and this is really important because we need an app that can easily handle not just text but also contain audio in a really logical easy way in the same note and
for a lot of people we'll also be capturing ideas through video so again when I'm working on guitar sometimes there are very specific voicings or shapes on my instrument and the best way for me to capture it is a quick video
recording of myself playing that so whatever app you choose needs to be able whatever app you choose needs to be able to handle and store multimedia files and whatever app you choose is that it needs to be easily accessible and by that I
mean accessible on multiple devices and in multiple locations so we ultimately want something that is webbased or is connected through a cloud service I used to use an app called Evernote and it's one of the biggest most popular note
taking apps I think it's really beautifully suited to songwriters because the notes in Evernote can capture text and voice notes all in the same app with really easy functionality you don't have to record audio
separately and then import it into the note I love that about Evernote the reason I stopped using Evernote is because I pretty quickly hit my note limit on the free plan and I have to be totally transparent with you when it
came time to upgrade to the paid service actually found the pricing kind of excessive especially when there are some free available Alternatives and
especially if you're an iPhone and Apple user the viable free Alternatives really that the cost of a subscription to something like everan note I just I just can't at the moment quite justify it for myself but I do really love their
products I use Apple notes now and it really fulfills all of those criteria the only extra step that I need to do in this system is I do need to share my this system is I do need to share my voice memos to Apple notes I can't open
an apple note and just record audio straight into the Apple note the other upside of Apple notes is that it's really good at handling video files so again if you are trying to capture your chord voicings as part of your
songwriting process it's really helpful to be able to put video into your notes and Apple notes stores it beautifully and a lot of the other apps have a lot of storage limits that are prohibitive if that's part of your workflow so Apple
notes in addition to Apple notes and voice memos which are really the two apps on the phone that I use to capture and organize ideas I also use a single paper songwriting Journal where I will develop ideas for the most part so I am
rarely capturing ideas inside a paper Journal but when it comes time to fleshing out ideas really wanting to do some free writing or sense writing or lyric development often pen to paper is
the best way so I will use a paper notebook for that whatever app you do use to capture your ideas it's really important to have a system for or organizing your ideas and that's really important so that when you come back to
important so that when you come back to your ideas it's not just an anonymous random scrolling list of notes that have no titles or descriptions or ways that you have categorized them so it helps make your songwriting sessions more
productive when you're not having to search for random notes that you took 2 months ago so that's why we want a bit of a system of organization so here here of a system of organization so here here is how I organize my songwriting ideas
and I would recommend something similar but something that is really based for you on your understanding of the types of ideas that you collect so here are
of ideas that you collect so here are the folders within my songwriting folder in Apple notes here are the different notes within my songwriting folder that represent the different kinds of ideas that I'm likely to capture so I have
that I'm likely to capture so I have have lines titles Melodies chords sounds have lines titles Melodies chords sounds I also have techniques and guitar ideas so let me talk about these different kinds of ideas and why I capture them in
kinds of ideas and why I capture them in separate notes so lines are really lines of lyric and these can just be random Snippets and fragments of interesting sentences lines images words word combinations just sound interesting
together the whole idea here is I'm going to capture things in this note going to capture things in this note when it's a cool lyric fragment that is not necessarily attached to any bigger song idea so it might be a cool rhyme
pair it might be something I overhear someone say it might be a news headline very frequently I will take lines from books and novels that I'm reading and something like that I will also add to the note the book and the author where I
took it from so that I know to rework it in some way if I do want to borrow the image or some aspect of the language that I am using from a reference source interestingly I keep a completely different note for titles and this is a
very common practice among professional songwriters to keep a title book or note totally separate from other types of lyrics a title is something that not
lyrics a title is something that not only expresses a core feeling image only expresses a core feeling image metaphor emotion or idea or message but that you can also feel within that title that it has the DNA to become many
different things you can Envision how you could approach this title from many different angles whether that's many different kinds of stories that could adhere themselves to this title or within one story or one memory or
experience that there's still multiple angles that you could approach this one phrase from that's when you know that something has the potential as a song title not just as another line of lyric inside your song then we have Melody
ideas and that's relatively self-evident so there's all sorts of different kinds of Melody ideas but for the most part this is where I collect those fragments of Melody ideas as they come when again they're sort of unattached to a specific
song they're just little fragments of Melody ideas I keep a separate note for chord ideas so again this expresses all these different different ways that a song can start and it's funny right cuz a lot of the time as songwriters a
from non- songwriters is do you start with the lyrics or the music and the answer is yes all of the above a song where a song starts it's what you do with it next where the real interesting
songwriting stuff happens but what you can see from these different folders is all the different ways that a song might actually start and all the different sorts of ideas and Inspirations that we can be attuned to and when we actually
have a system for capturing those different kinds of ideas it might even make it easier for us to pay attention to when those ideas arise so I have a separate note for chords which might just be chord progressions I come up
with noodling on the guitar or the piano it might also be from listening to other songs and learning chord progressions from other people's songs where I will record those core progressions for myself I also keep a sound folder and
this might be particular to me but it's a good indication of the kind of folder that you might keep if there's some other type of idea that you have identified is itself a type of idea and it's helpful to separate it from the
other types of ideas I get quite inspired by different sorts of sounds and typically what that means for me is it might be a sound design feature in a film or a TV show it's not a song or a piece of music necessarily sort of a
particular Sonic texture that I hear and I sort of want to use that Sonic texture in some particular way it might be you know the use of breath as a percussive instrument so I will collect different production
ideas or different sounds different Sonic textures and for me that's a distinct type of starting place or song seed than any of these other notes or folders so that's why I keep it as its own separate file there I also keep a
own separate file there I also keep a folder called techniques which is really about trying particular songwriting moves so for example starting with a moves so for example starting with a chorus starting with a half chorus using
a pre chorus the first time skipping it the second time and using it as a bridge so a lot of these ideas might come from my own listening to other people's songs and my own analysis or observation of other songs and it's this moment of
going oh I love the way that they did this thing I might use that thing too it's not specific about a chord progression or a mode or an instrument it's really about the move the technique the the thing about the songwriting that
is interesting these folders for me truly represent the different kinds of song seeds that I'm likely to capture in a moment and what I'll often do is just capture it as a quick note and then put it inside one of these notes I have
other subfolders inside my songwriting ideas folder one one of the folders is a distinct folder for sense writing sense writing is a practice that I do regularly and I do do it in lots of different places to be honest but when
I'm doing it on a computer I will do it inside here or at the very least I will copy and paste it immediately into this sense writing folder so I keep that in sense writing folder so I keep that in there as well I also keep a folder
called songs to analyze when I hear a song and I think oh there's something really special about that that I want to come back back to I will capture it there and then really come back to that as a catalyst to closely listen to the
songs that have peaked my interest for some reason and I know that there's something in that song that I want to use in my own songwriting so this to me is a way to remind myself what those songs are and a place for me to actually
put my notes and my analysis as I'm listening to those songs and finally I have a folder called song ideas so this is distinct from lines and titles is distinct from lines and titles because there are some times when a song
idea will come to me and probably to you in a more fleshed out way so it's not just a fragment of a lyric it's not just a title but it might actually be a title with a story so you find a title and you know exactly what the experience memory
moment situation scenario character setting whatever it is it comes to you you have an idea of what this song is going to be about so I capture them in this distinct folder because even the idea itself is slightly more developed
to talk a bit more about this song ideas folder in a moment but really this is a repository for song ideas that have a little bit more meat on the bones and ultimately a place where I come to then develop ideas beyond that initial
fragment of a song seed stage two in the songwriting process is developing ideas and this is when getting off uh smartphone and getting into a slightly literally larger platform can be helpful because we want to be able to edit
things on the fly to see things right next to each other to cut and paste to delete things to undo the delete you know all of that good stuff um I often will do off the iPhone I know there are some songwriters who are perfectly happy
to do it all on an iPhone that's not me so when I am developing song ideas I will do it inside the song ideas folder and this is really my workstation it's
really my workshop for a song as I am developing and working on a song so when I am developing and working on a song I will keep the lyrics as they are Works will keep the lyrics as they are Works in progress inside their distinct um
Apple note inside Apple notes one thing you'll observe inside a note is that I will keep the most complete version of the lyrics right up the top of the note but just underneath that is really the workshop it's really the shedding floor
where I'll work on a section it's where I'll cut and paste things it's where I'll reorder verses it's where I'll cut half a chorus and paste it at the beginning of the song just to see what that flow is like so below that is
really where all the workings happen but when I've made a decision and really feel like something is more solid I will always keep the current final version of the song note so that I can find it immediately and once there is a full
draft of a song something that is essentially singing it from beginning to essentially singing it from beginning to end I will always take that recording and put that you can just drag and drop it on a desktop into the Apple note
where I've been working on the lyrics so in that one note in the development stage of a song I have the most recent recording of the full song not a hundred different Snippets of audio in that file
just the full recording of the song I'll have the most upto-date lyric right at the top and then just underneath that again I've got all the workings for that song that I can always go back to if I'm continuing to work on the song and
and I want to go back and see what else I had come up with so I've got everything there in that file so this apple note system in the song idas apple note system in the song idas folder really represents the workshop of
a song idea and really has a system around where I can easily find and around where I can easily find and retrieve the most current version of the draft of the song stage three in the process of organizing your songs is
really organizing your finished songs so you could absolutely keep your finished songs right where they are for me I like to keep finished versions of songs in a uh different place all together and the
reason for that is at this stage when a song is finished what does it mean for a means for it to be finished is distinct from a final draft is that we are ready to share it for some reason with other people so part of this system is putting
people so part of this system is putting the finished version of a song in its own location so that it doesn't get confused with all the works in progress Snippets and fragments of the workshop process for a song so we want a separate
process for a song so we want a separate location where we can easily find and location where we can easily find and share the most current finished version of a song so the kinds of people we might be sharing it with are going to be
producers audio Engineers session musicians co-writers right so there are other people who are going to be involved so for me one of the most important things is that it is easily sharable and easily retrievable in
multiple different environments for me so I use nothing more complex and Google Drive for this process I organize my Google Drive by year and then by song and of course if there's an album project that I'm working on that year I
will also organize them within the album folder So within the album folder there will be the songs and then within the song folder are all the most important sharable assets for that song so there will be a demo version of that song
recorded to a click for the most part there will be the most recent version of the lyrics and there will also be chord charts or lead sheets if that's something I need so this is really a place where I store important final
sharable Assets in order to work the song with other people and it also some reason in the future a year from now 2 years from now 3 years from now it's all in one place I'm not sifting through all the different drafts of a
song I've got really just the final version in this one location the only other layer of detail that I will show you here is of course there's kind of a fourth stage to this organization process which is once you've actually
finished the production stage and you have the masters of your songs I keep those in their own folder again for ease of retrieval the most likely circumstance in my experience that I'm looking for those files is I'm only
for the chord chart and the lyric sheet I'm just looking for the audio file so I I'm just looking for the audio file so I keep all the master audio files in a keep all the master audio files in a master audio folder organized by year or
project ultimately a system of organization has to suit you and by all means try out this system you might find that it is overly complex you might find that it's only relevant to use a part of the system but really keep in mind this
the system but really keep in mind this idea that it should be fast for you to capture notes but you want to organize your song ideas in some kind of system that's going to make the creative process faster and more efficient and
more fun when you actually sit down to write a song you want to remove as much friction as possible in terms of finding ideas that you captured a couple of weeks or months ago and if you just have a small easy manageable system of
organization that reflects the kinds of ideas that you're collecting and that you're labeling those ideas in a simple but descriptive way that's going to that's essentially the basis of an organ ganization system happy writing I'll see
ganization system happy writing I'll see you next time bye