article Lyrics & ChordPro

Chords go in square brackets right before the syllable they fall on, like [G]Amazing [D]grace, and Band Central renders the chords positioned above the words. It is the standard shared by most chord apps, so charts you write here also open in apps like OnSong and SongBook+. Learn more at chordpro.org.

Band Central understands the common ChordPro directives:

• Song info: {title}, {subtitle}, {artist}, {key}, {tempo}, {time}, {capo}, {comment} (or {c:})
• Section headers: [Verse], [Chorus], [Bridge], [Intro], [Solo] on their own line
• Chorus / bridge gutter: {start_of_chorus}…{end_of_chorus} ({soc}/{eoc}) and {start_of_bridge}…{end_of_bridge}
• Highlight: {soh}…{eoh}
• Tab blocks: {start_of_tab}…{end_of_tab}
• Page break for printing: {pagebreak} / {new_page}

Use <b>…</b> for bold text — square brackets are reserved for chords. For a custom chord shape, add a {define} directive (see Chord Diagrams).

Open a ChordPro lyric and tap the transpose control (the up/down arrows) to shift every chord up or down by half-steps. This is a display offset saved with that lyric — it changes what you see on screen but does not rewrite the chords or change the saved key. Each lyric keeps its own transpose setting.

Tap the auto-scroll button to scroll the lyrics hands-free, and use the speed control to set the pace. The scroll speed is saved per lyric, so a fast song and a ballad each keep their own pace. You can also start auto-scroll from a foot pedal.

Pinch to zoom on the lyric, or use the Text Size control, to make the lyrics bigger or smaller (roughly 50% to 300%). Your size is remembered per device and syncs across your devices.

On Android, the in-app Lyric Search looks up a song on the web (Google, Ultimate Guitar, Chordie, and more) and lets you save the result onto the song as a ChordPro lyric. This is rolling out to iOS; in the meantime you can paste lyrics into a new lyric or import a file.