Pellucine — Help and questions

Pellucine is a songwriting notebook for your phone. One song sheet holds the chords printed over the lyrics, with a syllable count on every line. It plays the chords back on an instrument synthesized on the phone, and it records your voice over them.

It works offline. There is no account, no ads, and Pellucine sends nothing you write or sing anywhere.

This page answers the questions people ask, says plainly what the app cannot do, and tells you how to keep your songs safe.

Getting started

Do I need an account? No. There is no sign-in and nothing to register. Open the app and start writing.

Where do I begin? The first time you open Pellucine, the Songs screen offers two things: "Start a new song" and "Open the example song". The example is "Late Train", in G major at 92 bpm, so you can hear how a finished sheet plays before you write your own.

Do I need to save? No. There is no Save button. Every change is kept as you make it.

What Pellucine does

Songs

• Your songs are listed with the one you touched last at the top, along with "Where you left

off" so you can carry on.

• Once you have eight songs or more, a search field appears above the list.
• Each song has Rename, Duplicate ("A full copy, to try another version") and Delete.
• Pellucine sets no limit on how many songs you keep.

The song sheet

• Chords sit directly above the words they fall on. Each line shows its syllable count at the

right. When a word is not in the built-in dictionary, the count is an estimate and is shown with a "~" in front (for example "~8"), so a guess is never shown as fact.

• Tap a line to type. Tap a chord to move it along its line, or drag it.
• Each section has a label (Verse, Chorus, Bridge and so on) and a repeat count from ×1 to ×8.
• Add a new section from the sheet. A section's menu lets you rename it, set how many times

it plays, duplicate it (same chords, fresh lines to write) or delete it. A song always keeps at least one section.

• Choose the size of the lyric text in Settings.

Chords

• Pick from fifteen major keys and nine chords in each: I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii°, and two

borrowed chords, ♭VII and iv. Chords are stored as positions in the key, so changing the key re-spells the chords, and changing it back gives you the original names.

• Tap a chord to add it to the section's progression. Reorder bars, replace them, or remove

them. A bar can be half a bar (in 4/4), one bar or two bars long.

• Tempo runs from 40 to 240 bpm. A new song starts with the key and tempo of the last song

you made.

• All nine chords in all fifteen keys are free.

Sound, rhythm and structure

Three links under the song's key and tempo open the screens that change how it plays:

• Sound: the voice that plays the chords. Keys, a warm electric piano, is free. Pellucine

Pro adds Guitar, a Pad, a synth bass and a drum kit.

• Rhythm: how the chords are played, from held chords to patterns such as Campfire strum,

Ballad sway and Waltz. Songs are in 4/4 or 3/4.

• Structure: the play order. Reorder sections, bring a chorus back without retyping it,

remove a section from the play order, and loop one part while you work on it.

Recording

• Tap Record on the song sheet to sing over your progression. The microphone is asked for

only then, never at launch.

• Before your first take, Pellucine offers a short delay check: it plays a few clicks through

the speaker and listens for them, so your voice lines up with the music. You can skip it for now, re-run it, and nudge the timing by hand, in Settings under Recording. Each take also has its own nudge.

• Choose a count-in of 0, 1 or 2 bars, with or without a click. With a count-in, the count

numbers show whether or not the click sounds.

• Free, a song has one recording track. Recording again replaces it, after asking, and the old

take goes to Trash. Pellucine Pro gives a song up to four tracks, for harmonies and doubles, and the Mixer.

• On the Tracks screen you can name, mute and solo each take, and set its volume.

With Pellucine Pro

• More tracks and the Mixer: up to four takes per song, each with its volume and pan, the

instruments' level, and a master meter.

• Export: the mixed song as a WAV, the stems (one WAV per track and per instrument, all

starting at bar 1), a MIDI file of the chords, and a one-page chord sheet as a PDF. Each is made on the phone and handed to your share sheet.

• Presets: a library of chord progressions to start a section from.
• Rhymes: a rhyme finder on the lyric sheet.
• More instruments: Guitar, Pad, a synth bass and a drum kit.

Keys (the key reference)

The Keys tab shows the nine chords of every major key, spelled out and playable, with how to play each one on guitar or piano. It marks the two borrowed chords and says where they come from.

Settings

• Theme: System, Light or Dark.
• Lyric text size.
• Recording: the delay check, the nudge, the count-in and the click.
• Your songs: backup, restore, and Trash.
• About and licences: the version, and the fonts and word list the app is built on.

Keeping your songs safe

Can I lose a song? Pellucine is built so you should not. Changes are kept as you make them. A song you delete, and a take you replace, go to Trash for 30 days, and you can restore them from there. If one song's saved copy is ever damaged, the others still open.

What if the app closes while I am recording? If you leave the app while recording, the take stops and is saved, and Pellucine tells you so when you come back. Recordings are written to the phone about a second at a time, so if the app is closed unexpectedly, the next launch recovers what was recorded up to roughly the last second.

How do I empty Trash? Open Trash (from Settings, or from the Songs screen when Trash has something in it). Each item has Restore and Delete forever. Delete forever asks once before it acts. Anything left in Trash is cleared after 30 days.

Backing up and moving your songs

Pellucine keeps your songs only on this phone and makes no cloud copy, so a backup is the way to keep a copy elsewhere or move to a new phone. (If your phone's own Android backup is on, Android may copy Pellucine's storage to your Google account. That has not been tested, so do not count on it.)

To back up: on the Songs screen, under "Keep your songs safe", tap "Back up all songs" (the same option is in Settings, under Your songs). Pellucine shows how big the file is and what is inside, then hands it to your phone's share sheet. Save it to your files, a drive you use, or send it to yourself.

The backup is one .pellucine file holding every song and every take. It also holds a plain text copy of each song, chords on their own line above each lyric line, so your words and chords can be read without Pellucine. The file is an ordinary zip archive: if a computer will not open it, rename it to end in .zip.

Backup as text: if a file is awkward, start the backup from Settings, under Your songs, and choose "Copy as text instead", then paste it into a note or an email to yourself. Text holds your songs but not your recorded takes; those travel only in the file.

To restore: tap "Restore from a file" and choose the backup, or in Settings tap "Restore from pasted text". Restoring adds songs you do not have, and where the backup's copy of a song is the newer one, it replaces this phone's older copy. It never quietly overwrites a newer version: where this phone's copy was changed more recently than the backup's, it asks whether to keep this phone's version or use the backup's. If you choose the backup's, this phone's copy goes to Trash for 30 days.

Important: uninstalling Pellucine, or clearing its storage in your phone's settings, removes your songs from the phone. Make a backup first.

What Pellucine cannot do

Some of these are limits of the platform. Some are choices. Either way, we would rather say so here than have you find out later.

• No sync between devices. There is no account and no cloud. Use a backup file to move

songs.

• No recording in the background. When you leave the app, a recording stops and saves.
• No notifications, reminders, widgets or badges. Pellucine never reaches out to you.
• No watch app, and nothing on Android Auto or CarPlay.
• Bluetooth headsets drop to call quality while the microphone is on. That is how phones

handle Bluetooth microphones. Wired headphones keep the backing out of your vocal and sound better.

• No recorded or sampled instruments. Every instrument sound is synthesized on the phone.

The only recorded audio is your voice.

• No effects, pitch correction or automatic mastering.
• No AI songwriting. Syllable counts come from a pronouncing dictionary built into the

app, and Pellucine does not write lyrics or melodies for you.

• Chords are the nine listed above, in major keys only. The chord-colour switch in the

builder plays each one as a plain triad, a 7th, a sus or a lush chord (added ninths). There are no minor keys in this version.

• iPhone and iPad: the App Store version is the same app. Its free trial is Apple's own (see

"How do the plans work?"), and you manage it in your iPhone's Settings.

Free, paid, and what stays free

What does Pellucine cost? Pellucine Pro, sold through Google Play and the App Store, costs $19.99 a year, or $2.99 a month, or $49.99 once for lifetime (US prices; the store shows yours before you confirm). You can try it free for a week first: on Android with no card, and on iPhone and iPad as Apple's free trial of the yearly plan. The download is free, and so is everything listed below. There are no ads.

What does Pro add? More recording tracks with the Mixer; export as a mixed WAV, stems, a MIDI file and a chord sheet; the preset progression library; the rhyme finder; and the guitar and pad voices, synth bass and drums. Pro also gets a new pack of preset progressions about every quarter. See "With Pellucine Pro" above.

What is free forever?

• No limit set on songs, with no account and no ads, kept on this phone.
• The progression builder in every key and tempo, played on the keys voice.
• The lyric sheet, with chords above the lyrics and a syllable count on every line.
• One vocal recording track over the progression, with a count-in.
• The key reference, showing every key's chords.
• Backup and restore of your songs to a file on your phone.

How do the plans work?

• The free week opens Pro for 7 days with one tap, with no card and no purchase. Pellucine

offers it after your first take, and on the Pellucine Pro screen. Nothing is charged and nothing renews when it ends: Pro locks again, and every song and take you made still opens and plays. From day 5, the top of the Songs screen says when the week ends.

• Yearly: Google Play charges $19.99 when you confirm, and every year after, until you

cancel.

• Monthly: Google Play charges $2.99 when you confirm, and every month after, until you

cancel.

• Lifetime is paid once and never renews. If you already have a subscription, buying

lifetime does not stop it: cancel it in Google Play so it does not renew. The Pellucine Pro screen says so, with a link to Google Play's subscription page.

• On iPhone and iPad, there is no no-card week: the free week is Apple's own 1-week free

trial of the yearly plan, for new subscribers, started in Apple's purchase sheet. Unless you cancel at least 24 hours before it ends, the yearly plan begins and Apple charges $19.99, and every year after. Monthly and lifetime are charged to your Apple Account; a subscription you want to stop when you buy lifetime is cancelled in Settings, not Google Play. Buying a subscription during the trial ends the rest of the trial, where applicable.

If I subscribe and then stop, what happens to my songs? Every song you have still opens, plays every track you recorded, and can be edited. Only adding new things that belong to Pro (a new track, presets, rhymes, an export) asks for Pro again.

Cancelling, refunds and restoring

To cancel, in two taps: open Settings and tap your plan's row, "Yearly plan" or "Monthly plan" (1), then tap "Manage subscription in Google Play settings" (2). That opens Google Play's own subscription page, where you cancel. There is no screen of ours in between, no offer to talk you out of it, and nothing to fill in. You can also cancel any time from the Google Play app directly. You keep Pro until the end of the period you paid for.

On iPhone and iPad: open Settings in Pellucine, tap your plan's row ("Yearly plan", "Monthly plan" or "Free trial"), then "Manage subscription in Settings"; or open the iPhone's own Settings, tap your name at the top, then Subscriptions. Cancel at least 24 hours before the period ends to avoid the next charge.

Refunds are handled by the store, not by us, because the store takes the payment. Ask Google Play through its refund page, https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2479637 , or Apple at https://reportaproblem.apple.com for a purchase made on iPhone or iPad.

Restore purchases is on the Pellucine Pro screen, for a new phone or a reinstall, signed in to the same Google account (on iPhone and iPad, the same Apple Account). A lifetime purchase restores the same way.

Privacy, in short

• Your songs and takes stay on your phone.
• Pellucine has no account, no crash reports, no ads and no usage tracking.
• If you buy Pellucine Pro, Google Play (on iPhone and iPad, Apple) takes the payment and RevenueCat, the app's billing

service, keeps the purchase record so the app knows what you own. They see the purchase, never your songs.

• The microphone is used only when you tap Record or run the delay check, and only while it

runs.

• Pellucine lets a song leave the phone only when you send it yourself: a backup file or an

export through your phone's share sheet, or backup text you copy and paste. Your phone's own backup may also include it.

The full privacy policy is linked from the store listing.

Who we are

Pellucine is published by the developer named on its Google Play and App Store listings. It is built and looked after by that developer; there is no support department or call centre behind it.

The app stands on other people's work, credited inside it under Settings, About and licences: the Fira Sans and Source Serif 4 typefaces, the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (which gives the syllable counts), and the tonal music library, used while building the app to check the chord spellings.

Getting in touch

Write to the developer email address shown on Pellucine's Google Play or App Store listing. Tell us your phone or iPad model, its Android or iOS version, and the version number at the foot of Settings, and what you expected to happen. Please do not send a backup file unless we ask: it holds your songs.