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ChordPro Directives

Learn the ChordPro directives most musicians actually use for song metadata, verse and chorus sections, tab blocks, and visible comments.

ChordPro directives are the named commands inside a ChordPro file. They usually sit on their own lines inside curly braces and describe the song's metadata, structure, or visible labels.

{title: Fast Car}
{artist: Tracy Chapman}
{start_of_chorus}
{end_of_chorus}

This page covers the directives you are most likely to see in real chord sheets.

Metadata directives

Metadata directives describe the song rather than the lyric body.

title

{title: Wonderwall}

subtitle

{subtitle: Acoustic Version}

artist

{artist: Dolly Parton}

key, capo, tempo, time

{key: G}
{capo: 2}
{tempo: 84}
{time: 4/4}

These are common utility directives in song libraries. Different ChordPro apps may display them differently.

{copyright: Copyright 1971 Example Music}

Section directives

Section directives mark off parts of the song like verses, choruses, bridges, or tab sections. They usually come in start/end pairs.

Verse

{start_of_verse}
[G]Take me down to the [C]river
{end_of_verse}

Chorus

{start_of_chorus}
[D]Sing it [A]loud
{end_of_chorus}

Bridge

{start_of_bridge}
[Bm]Everything changes [G]here
{end_of_bridge}

Tab

{start_of_tab}
e|----------------|
B|--------3---1---|
G|------2---2---0-|
D|----0-----------|
A|----------------|
E|----------------|
{end_of_tab}

That is useful to know when you are reading existing ChordPro files. In Chordly itself, guitar tabs are handled through the live tab block editor rather than by typing raw tab directives into the page.

Visible comment directives

Some directives add visible text to the rendered output instead of just storing metadata.

comment

{comment: Chorus}

This is commonly used to add a simple label above the next section.

You may also run into related variants like comment_italic or comment_box, but comment is the main one to know.

A practical example

{title: House of the Rising Sun}
{artist: Traditional}
{key: Am}
{capo: 0}

{start_of_verse}
There is a [Am]house in [C]New Or[D]leans
They [F]call the [Am]Rising [E]Sun
{end_of_verse}

{comment: Chorus}
[Am]And it's been the ruin of [C]many a poor boy