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What is ChordPro?

ChordPro is the open, plain-text format for chord charts. Chords go in square brackets, inline with the lyric they belong to. Everything else is a directive in curly braces.

Because a ChordPro chart is just text, it opens anywhere, transposes by software instead of by hand, and outlives whichever app you happen to use today. That is why BandBinder is built on it.

Open ChordPro files free Open the ChordPro Hub

{title: Song} {key: G} [G]Line one [D]Line two {sot} e|--0--2--3--| {eot}

What app opens ChordPro files?

BandBinder does, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS, and it is the same app on all five. Open a chart, edit it, transpose it, perform from it offline, and export it back out as ChordPro whenever you want. There is no song limit and no trial: the app is free on every device you own, forever.

Read and edit

Chords render inline above the lyric they belong to. Tab and intro sections between {sot} and {eot} stay in monospace and are never transposed.

Transpose on the fly

Change key without rewriting the chart. The underlying file is untouched, so the version you share with the band stays the one you agreed on.

Export any time

Your charts leave as easily as they arrive. Export a song or your whole library back to ChordPro, so nothing here is a one-way door.

Works offline

Everything above happens on your own device. Performance Mode is 100% offline, which matters on the stages where the Wi-Fi does not reach.

See which ChordPro directives map to which BandBinder features

Convert your charts to ChordPro

Most people arrive with charts in something other than ChordPro. BandBinder detects the format from the file's contents rather than its extension, so you rarely have to tell it anything.

Can I convert a PDF to ChordPro?

Yes, when the PDF has a real text layer, which most charts exported from Word, OnSong, SongbookPro or arrangement software do. BandBinder extracts the text and runs it through the same chord-over-lyric detection it uses for pasted charts, entirely offline on your own device. A scanned or photographed page has no text layer to read, so it is kept as a PDF you can still perform from rather than imported as garbage.

Here is what happens to each kind of chart you might bring:

What you have What happens
A ChordPro file (.cho, .chopro, .chordpro, .crd, .pro) Imported directly, chords and directives intact.
An OnSong file (.onsong) Read natively and converted. No intermediate export step, and no conversion tool in between.
A plain-text chart (.txt) with chords above the lyrics The chord-over-lyric layout is detected and converted to inline ChordPro.
A PDF with a text layer The text is extracted and converted into an editable chart for you to review. Entirely offline on your own device, no upload, no cloud service.
A scanned or photographed PDF There is no text layer to read, so nothing is invented. The page is kept as a PDF you can still perform from, and BandBinder tells you why rather than importing empty content.
Chart text you copied from Ultimate Guitar or Genius Paste it into a new, empty song and the format is detected and cleaned up, with an undo and a manual override.
A folder full of any of the above Import the whole folder in one action. Duplicates are flagged before anything is added.

BandBinder never fetches or scrapes lyrics or chords from any website. It only reads files you already have and text you have already copied yourself.

Read the full import guide

Why a plain-text format is worth caring about

A chart locked inside one app is a chart you can lose. ChordPro is the opposite of that: readable by a human, editable in any text editor, diff-able, and portable between every app that supports it. If BandBinder disappeared tomorrow, your library would still open.

It also makes the band-shared version honest. One text file is one arrangement, so "which chart are we playing?" has an answer everybody can read.

Download BandBinder Read the authoring guide