ChordPro 6.04 Cheat Sheet

General

ChordPro input is a file containing song lyrics, chords and annotations.

Chords are placed between brackets [ and ].

Annotations are placed between bracket-star [* and ].

The input data may be encoded in ASCII, ISO 8859.1, UTF-8, UTF-16 or UTF-32. Lines may be continued on the next line by putting a backslash \ at the end. Unicode escape sequences (\u followed by 4 hexadecimal digits) are replaced by the corresponding unicode character.¹

Directives control processing and output. Directives are placed between braces { and } and must be on a single line.

Example:

{title: Twinkle}
[C]Twinkle, twinkle, [F]little [C]star

Texts and chords can use ChordPro Markup and metadata.

Lines that start with a hash # are ignored.

Lines that end with a backslash \ will get the next line appended, where the backslash and leading whitespace of the next line are discarded.

Directives

Directives can be conditionally executed by appending a dash - and a selector to the directive name.

Arguments to directives may be separated by a colon : and/or whitespace. They may be quoted with "" or ''.

Directive	Short	Purpose	Since
chord name …		Display diagram in-line.	5.0
… base-fret base		Specify base-fret (1 or higher).2	5.0
… diagram display		Override diagram display. May be a colour.	6.03
… display display		Override chord properties.2	6.02
… fingers pos1 pos2 pos3 …		Specify finger positions.2	6.0
… format format		Format string for display purposes.2	6.02
… frets pos1 pos2 pos3 …		Specify fret positions.2	5.0
… keys pos1 pos2 pos3 …		Specify keyboard keys.2	6.0
chordcolour colour		Chord colour.	5.0
chordfont font	cf3	Chord font.	1.0
chordsize size	cs3	Chord size.	1.0
chorus		Recall chorus. May have a label.4	5.0
choruscolour colour		Chorus colour.	6.03
chorusfont font		Chorus font.	6.03
chorussize size		Chorus size.	6.03
column_break	cb	New column or page.	3.6
columns cols	col	Number of columns.	3.6
comment	c	Comment.	1.0
comment_box	cb	Comment.	3.6
comment_italic	ci	Comment.	3.6
define name …		Define chord.	1.0
… base-fret base		Specify base-fret (1 or higher).2	1.0
… diagram display		Override diagram display. May be a colour.	6.03
… display display		Override chord properties.2	6.02
… fingers pos1 pos2 pos3 …		Specify finger positions.2	6.0
… format format		Format string for display purposes.2	6.02
… frets pos1 pos2 pos3 …		Specify fret positions.2	1.0
… keys pos1 pos2 pos3 …		Specify keyboard keys.2	6.0
diagrams		Control diagrams printing	6.02
end_of_section		Ends a specific section.	6.0
end_of_bridge	eob	Ends bridge section.	6.0
end_of_chorus	eoc	Ends chorus section.	1.0
end_of_grid	eog5	Ends grid section.	5.0
end_of_tab	eot	Ends tab section.	3.6
end_of_verse	eov	Ends verse section.	6.0
footersize size		Footer size.	5.0
footercolour colour		Footer colour.	5.0
footerfont font		Footer font.	5.0
grid	g	Obsolete. See {diagrams}.	3.6
highlight		Same as comment.	5.0
image …		Include image.	5.0
… anchor= anchor		Anchor for static image.	6.01
… border		Draws a 1 point border around the image.	5.0
… border= width		Draws a border around the image (points).	5.0
… center		Center image.	5.0
… center= arg		Center image if arg .	5.0
… height= height		Height (points).	5.0
… id= id		Asset id.	6.01
… scale= scale		Scale factor (number).	5.0
… spread= advance		Places the image at the top of the page, across the full page width	6.0
… src= filename		Image file name	5.0
… title= text		Provides a title (caption) for the image.	5.0
… width= width		Width (points).	5.0
… x= offset		Horizontal offset (points) for static image.	6.01
… y= offset		Vertical offset (points) for static image.	6.01
meta item		Metadata.	5.0
meta album name	album	Album name.	5.0
meta artist name	artist	Artist name.	5.0
meta capo pos	capo	Capo.	5.0
meta composer name	composer	Composer name.	5.0
meta copyright text	copyright	Copyright.	5.0
meta duration …	duration	Duration (mm:ss or seconds).	5.0
meta key key	key	Key.	5.0
meta lyricist name	lyricist	Lyricist name.	5.0
meta sorttitle text	sorttitle	Sort title.	6.0
meta tempo bpm	tempo	Tempo (beats per minute).	5.0
meta time n / m	time	Time signature.	5.0
meta year text	year	Release date.	5.0
new_page	np	Starts new page.	3.6
new_physical_page	npp	Starts new page.	3.6
new_song …	ns	Starts a new song.	1.0
… toc= arg		Enter the title in the table of contents if arg (default)	6.04
no_grid	ng	Obsolete. See {diagrams:off}.	3.6
pagetype …6		Set page (paper) size.	4.0
start_of_section		Starts a specific section. May have a label.	6.0
start_of_bridge	sob	Starts bridge section. May have a label.	6.0
start_of_chorus	soc	Starts chorus section. May have a label.4	1.0
start_of_grid	sog5	Starts grid section. May have a label.4	5.0
start_of_tab	sot	Starts tab section May have a label.4	3.6
start_of_verse	sov	Starts verse section. May have a label.	6.0
subtitle text	st	Subtitle for song.	1.0
tabcolour colour		Tabs colour.	5.0
tabfont font		Tabs font.	5.0
tabsize size		Tabs size.	5.0
textcolour colour		Text colour.	5.0
textfont font	tf3	Text font.	1.0
textsize size	ts3	Text size.	1.0
title text	t	Title for song.	1.0
titlesize size		Title size.	5.0
titlecolour colour		Title colour.	5.0
titlefont font		Title font.	5.0
titles flush		Flush titles (center, left or right).	3.6.4
tocsize size		Table of contents font size.	5.0
toccolour colour		Table of contents colour.	5.0
tocfont font		Table of contents font.	5.0
transpose semitones		Transpose by a number of semitones.	5.0
x_…		Custom directive.	5.0

Notes

There are no archived releases between 1.2 and 3.6, so unless there are pre-1.2 proofs 3.6 is taken to be the initial release for a feature.

There has never been an official 5.0 release. 5.0 was mostly an intermediate development target for 6.0.

As of version 6, the version numbering is according to semantic versioning. However, to obtain a defined sorting order of file names a two-digit minor version is combined with a single digit patch number to form a single three-digit fraction. 6.030 is version 6, minor 3, patch 0.