Capture ideas

ScratchPad

Catch a melody or a line before it disappears, with the words written down for you.

Steps

1
Go to ScratchPad and create a pad. Choose the cloud folder it should live in — the full folder path is shown, and you can remember it as your default idea folder.
2
Press record and sing or speak your idea. Press again to stop. Newest takes appear at the top.
3
Play a take back with the scrub bar, and delete it if it wasn't the one.
4
Click Transcribe to turn the recording into text. The take's name is used in the file names.
5
Copy the text into lyrics or notes, then Save. A new draft file is written only when the lyrics or notes actually changed, named like Audit Log - Lyrics_v02_09-01-2026_18.49.txt using your local clock.
6
Use Promote on any draft to make it the main lyrics.txt or notes.txt for the pad.
7
Use Import HotTake, or Create pad from HotTake, to pull an existing HotTake recording into a pad.

Recordings are 44.1 kHz, so they're clean enough to build on later.
Nothing is stored on our servers — takes go straight to your cloud folder.
Renaming a pad renames its folder in your drive, and the rename is logged in the authorship trail.
Drafts, deletions and promotions all show up in the pad's authorship trail at the bottom of the page.