Guide

Every song is a text in the ChordPro format: lyrics with chords in square brackets. Both views come from that single source — the Sheet for playing and the Editor for writing.

Tapping a song always opens the Sheet first; the Editor sits one level above it. The source text is the binding version: transposing, wrapping and hiding chords change the display only, never what you wrote.

A song need not be text at all. It may hold only photos, or both. Add to that the links and the tabs of the chords it uses — everything hangs on the same song.

1. In the Songs tab, tap + at the top right. The empty song opens in the Editor straight away.
2. Type or paste the text — songs copied from the web are converted as you paste them.
3. The title goes in the header line. Everything else lives in the toolbar: Photos, Links, Tabs and Settings, each with a screen of its own.
4. Save with ⋯ › Save. The entry is only active while there is something to save.

You do not have to learn it — the toolbar writes all of it for you. Knowing it just makes typing faster.

Your line breaks are kept. On top of that the Sheet wraps long lines at the screen edge — chord line and lyric line always at the same place, so every chord stays above its syllable. It breaks at word boundaries and never inside a chord name.

A whole song looks like this

{title: Amazing Grace}
{artist: Traditional}
{key: G}
{tempo: 72}

{comment: Three-four time — count calmly}

{start_of_verse: Verse 1}
[G]Amazing [G7]grace! how [C]sweet the [G]sound
that saved a wretch like [D]me!
{end_of_verse}

Three notations look alike and do different things:

You will mostly meet {c: Chorus} in files from chord sites, where it stands in for a real section. But it only prints text — the app cannot tell that a chorus begins there. If you want structure, use {start_of_chorus}.

The bar stays above the text at all times, in two rows. On top, the tools for the text:

• Undo and redo — continuous typing counts as one step, every toolbar action as its own.
• Chord — puts square brackets around the selection. With nothing selected it inserts an empty pair.
• Section — Intro, Verse, Chorus, Bridge or Outro. With a selection the section wraps around it; without one it takes the paragraph the cursor sits in. If the cursor is already inside a section, that section is relabelled — ChordPro has no nested sections.
• Comment — turns the selection into a {comment: …} that appears on stage.
• Note — turns the line into a # line that never reaches the stage. Tapping again takes it back.

Below it the four areas of a song — Photos, Links, Tabs and Settings — each with its own screen. At the end of that row an arrow closes the keyboard while you are in the text.

At the very bottom stand all chords the song already uses. A tap inserts one at the cursor — with [A7sus4] that saves a fair amount.

Songs copied from the net usually have a chord line above the lyric line:

G         C
Amazing grace how sweet the sound

When you paste through the text field's own menu, Chordora recognises that by itself and moves every chord to its place in the line:

[G]Amazing [C]grace how sweet the sound

A chord that lands mid-word snaps to the nearer word boundary instead of cutting the word in two. A notice at the bottom reports the conversion and offers Undo. Text that is already ChordPro, and plain lyrics without a chord line, are left alone.

The Sheet is the view for playing: read-only, full-bleed, without navigation and tab bars. Title and artist sit top left, auto-scroll and close top right, and the caret at the bottom right holds the remaining controls.

• Auto-scroll — starts and pauses the running scroll. You can swipe at any time; the run continues from where you let go. A plain tap does not stop it — that is what the pause button is for.
• Transpose — up, down, reset, by semitones. The current shift and the sounding key stand under the title. The source text never changes.
• Font size and scroll speed — both here too, not only in Settings. Whether it runs too fast is something you notice while playing.
• Chords on and off — switched off, the chord lines fall away entirely and the view becomes much more compact.
• Tabs on and off — the strip of chord diagrams above the text.
• Open Editor — the way to editing.

Transposition, font size, scroll speed and both switches are stored per song and are back the next time you open it. Without a value of its own, the one from Settings applies.

Below the song come the photos, and at the very bottom the links. Notes from the song settings stand in small type under title and artist.

A tab is a chord diagram: six strings, the frets across, the dots carrying finger numbers. If the shape fits the first five frets the diagram starts at the nut; otherwise the number of the first fret shown stands on the left.

The Tabs switch in the control column puts a strip above the text holding the chords the song uses — in their order, each one once.

• A tap on a tab strums the chord, string by string.
• A long press opens the voicing picker. Your choice applies to this song and is remembered; other songs with the same chord are untouched.

When you transpose, the strip shows the chords as they sound. Your chosen voicing moves along as far as the fretboard allows — otherwise the computed suggestion steps in.

Which chords appear in the strip is up to you, under Tabs in the editor toolbar: remove, add your own, reorder. Read from song restores the state of the song — either only the missing ones, or all of them.

The Chords tab stands on its own and needs no song open. At the top you switch between Chord library and My voicings.

Chord library

Type the chord (Am7, F#m7b5, G/B) or click it together from root, quality and extensions — triad, fifth, seventh and every extension separately with ♭, ♮ or ♯. The name follows from that, not the other way round.

The voicings below come from a curated collection, with fingerings. Whatever is not in it, Chordora works out from the notes and the tuning — which is why even a rarely used chord gets a diagram, not just the ones on a list. They are sorted by playability, and each position on the neck yields exactly one suggestion rather than four variations of the same shape.

Your own voicings — few apps do this

Most apps show you what is on their list. Chordora lets you set any shape you like yourself and keep it for good.

A tap on a voicing you found opens the voicing editor with exactly that shape — move a few fingers and save the result. Starting from scratch works just as well, via the + under "My voicings".

• Above the nut, a tap toggles between open and muted; on the fretboard it places a finger.
• You hear the string as you do it, and a stroke across the strings strums the whole shape — so you know at once whether it sounds the way you imagined.
• Chordora names the shape for you until you type something: the reverse lookup tells you what you are holding — often several readings, since Am and C6/A are the same notes. Label and root can be overwritten at any time.

Saved voicings are offered everywhere their chord appears — transposed as well. A Cmaj7 you set yourself is the same shape as a Gmaj7, seven frets along; Chordora works that out and tells you how many frets it moved.

Often all a song has is a handwritten page. Photos in the editor toolbar opens the list. The dashed tile with the + offers Scan page, From library and — as soon as an image is waiting — From clipboard.

The document scanner finds the edges of the paper, straightens them and lifts the contrast; several pages go in one pass. You change the order by dragging one tile onto another.

Photos stand on equal footing with the text: a song may have both, text only or photos only. In the Sheet the photos follow the text in order — one content, no switching. Auto-scroll runs across both.

A tap on a photo in the Sheet shows it full screen: pinch to zoom, drag to move, and a double tap jumps between fitted and zoomed in. With several photos you swipe sideways.

Any number of references can be attached to a song — Spotify, YouTube, a tab site. Links in the editor toolbar opens the list.

A link is two parts: the address and the text it appears under. Both sit in the row and can be changed at any time. You need not type https://, and without a text of your own the app derives one from the address — "Spotify", for instance.

Adding is the + under New link, deleting the bin in the row. Reordering is Edit at the top right, from two links on.

In the Sheet the links sit at the very bottom, after text and photos. In the song list a chain symbol shows that a song has some — like the document symbol for photos.

1. In the Setlists tab, tap + at the top right and give it a name.
2. With + inside the setlist, pick several songs at once.
3. Under Edit, drag to reorder. Swiping left takes a song out of the setlist — it is not deleted, it stays under Songs and in every other setlist.

Setlists appear as tiles, two across. Each shows its name and the first few titles. A long press offers Rename, Duplicate, As PDF, a colour to mark it by, and Delete setlist. From two setlists on, a sort order appears at the top left.

The same song may stand in any number of setlists, at a different position in each — it is not copied. Delete a song and it disappears everywhere.

A long press on a song or a setlist offers As PDF.

For a setlist the document starts with a cover page — the setlist's name and the songs it holds with their artists — and then each song begins on a new page. Every page carries a page number and the Chordora mark.

The PDF takes the photos along too, each on a page of its own. It prints on A4 in fixed character width, in the key the Sheet was last set to. For band members it is therefore the more complete format.

A long press on a song offers Share; the same entry sits in the ⋯ menu in the Editor. What is sent is a .chopro file — an open text format other programs read as well.

In Settings, Export all songs puts the whole collection in one ChordPro file, separated by {new_song}. Title, artist and the links travel with it. Import songs reads such files back in, and single .chopro files just as well, several at a time.

The search bar under Songs searches title, artist, lyrics, chords and tags at once.

The symbol at the top left picks the sort order: last opened, title, artist or date created. Swiping left offers Delete and Editor, swiping right puts the song in a setlist. A long press opens Share, Rename, Duplicate and As PDF.

• Appearance — light, dark or as the system.
• Accidentals — by key picks sharps or flats to suit the target key, E♭ rather than D♯ in flat keys. You can also fix one spelling.
• German notation — writes H for B and B for B♭, both when reading and when displaying.
• Font sizes — separately for Editor and Sheet. The control in the Sheet itself overrides the value for that one song.
• Auto-scroll — the speed for songs that have nothing of their own stored yet.

The app's language is changed in the iOS system settings — Chordora speaks German, English, Spanish and French.

Capo is information only and does not shift the chords. If a key is stored, the Sheet additionally shows the sounding key — with a capo at the 2nd fret and shapes in C, that is D.

To really transpose, use the transpose buttons. They change the chords shown, not the source text.

Chordora is free and holds ten songs — the three demo songs that ship with it included. If you do not need them, delete them and win the room back.

Beyond that, Chordora Unlimited unlocks any number of songs — a one-off €2.99, no subscription, valid on every device with the same Apple ID. Whatever you have already created stays in place and usable either way.