Chordz & Songz (The Fun Stuff)

Chords & lyrics? Yeah, that's literally the meat & potatoes of your song, fam. You can throw 'em in brackets or plop those chords right over the words like you're conducting an invisible orchestra. Stick it all in sections so your tune doesn't look like a hot mess express.

The Chord Situation

OnSong^® files usually roll with alphabetic chords that've got some fancy voicing or a split bass note thrown in for pizzazz. Like, you might see something ridiculous like Asus4/C#. But PLOT TWIST—OnSong^® 2026 & higher now let you use numbers if you're feeling all numerical, so 1sus4/3 is totes a thing now too.

Bracketed Chords (aka The Lazy Way)

Bracketed chords? That's when you smoosh the chords right on the same line as your lyrics but wrap 'em in square brackets like they're in timeout. Check it:

Verse 1:
Amazing [D]Grace, how [G]sweet the [D]sound,
That saved a wretch like [A7]me.
I on[D]ce was lost, but [G]now am [D]found,
Was blind, but [A7]now I [D]see.

This is literally the golden child method for OnSong File Format & ChordPro File Format, so use it if you wanna be cool.

Chords Over Lyrics (The Boomer Move)

The other way? Stack your chords on a line above the lyrics & use a buncha spaces to line 'em up real fancy-like. Most music from other formats does this, so here we are:

Verse 1:
        D           G        D
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
                         A7
That saved a wretch like me.
  D                  G      D
I once was lost, but now am found,
               A7    D
Was blind, but now I see.

Real talk tho—if you dump random non-chord words on a chord line, OnSong's gonna straight-up ghost those chords & pretend they don't exist. Bump any musical notes or instructions down to the next line, yeah? UNLESS you're feelin' parentheses—throw instructions in () & boom, chord line detected. Or start the line with a period or backtick to force-feed it as chords, like this:

.I Am Chords
`I Am Also

OnSong's got a whole rulebook for recognizing chords—buckle up:

1. Gotta start with a capital A, B, C, D, E, F, G or H (some languages are fancy)
2. Can tack on a flat or sharp: #, b, ♯ or ♭
3. Can throw in a modifier: add, sus, m, min, man, aug or dim
4. Then maybe a numeric position like: 0, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, or 13
5. Can flat or sharp those numbers with: #, b, ♯ or ♭
6. Can slash for a bass note—like "A minor over C"—which can ALSO be sharped or flatted if you're nasty.

Comments (The Invisible Ink Section)

Wanna write notes that literally nobody will see except you in edit mode? Prefix that line with a "#" & BAM, secret agent status achieved:

# This line will not appear in the song viewer, only in the song editor.