Some tags are more reliable than others, and some tags only work inside the appropriate genre.
Keep it simple. Tags seem to work best with a maximum of 3 words.
When tagging a song section, try a short style description and a noun – the instrument or voice that should be heard.
✅︎ [Syncopated Bass]
Overloading the metatag can cause the instruction to be ignored, or it might be sung as part of the lyrics.
[call and response between percussion and bass]Verse and Chorus
A pattern that works well for Continued songs is to have a verse and chorus in each clip. The tags are not necessary, the AI will build a song pattern from the lyrics with or without them.
Verses are usually rhythmic and restrained, while the chorus has more melody and energy. A chorus is usually the ‘hook’ of the song, when it repeats it makes the song feel intentional and emotional.
AI-generated lyrics often use 1 verse and 1 chorus per clip.
[Verse]
[Chorus]
Add descriptive Style Words to metatags to guide how the lyrics should be sung.
[Sad Verse]
[Happy Chorus]
Use musical terms to influence the genre.
[Rapped Verse]
[Powerpop Chorus]
Lyrics are Stronger than Metatags.
Metatags can ‘nudge’ the AI within the lyrics, but the lyric structure, the current song pattern, and the Style Prompt are stronger influences than the tags.
Even when they work, they don’t always work. When they do work, it can still feel like a casino.
A fast rap song needs more words per line than a slow ballad.
Verse and Chorus need different syllable-per-line counts and phrasing, or they will sound the same and blur together.
It’s possible to have a song that’s just verses when all the lyrics follow the same pattern and rhyme scheme.
Pre-chorus and Bridge
Pre-chorus and bridge are for stray lyrics outside the main pattern. They build anticipation as the song transitions and often don’t rhyme or appear to fit the meter.
[Pre-Chorus]
[Bridge]
AI-generated lyrics sometimes include a pre-chorus without labeling it, causing Suno to sing it as an awkward extra line that doesn’t fit the meter.
Adding a metatag label tells Suno this break in the song pattern is intentional, and it should be sung as its own pattern.
Lyrics generated by AI
[Verse]
Cruisin’ down the streets with nowhere to go
Miles of cars, it’s a never-ending show
Round and round, it’s like a crazy maze
Every parking space, a mirage, a haze
Anxiety’s building, it’s drivin’ me insane
[Chorus]
Driving in circles, looking for a spot
I’m runnin’ out of gas, I’m losing all my shots
Edited to add a [Pre-chorus]
[Verse]
Cruisin’ down the streets with nowhere to go
Miles of cars, it’s a never-ending show
Round and round, it’s like a crazy maze
Every parking space, a mirage, a haze
[Pre-chorus]
Anxiety’s building, it’s drivin’ me insane
[Chorus]
Driving in circles, looking for a spot
I’m runnin’ out of gas, I’m losing all my shots
Pre-chorus is a lead-in to a chorus. A bridge can go anywhere. It may be enough to simply set apart the lyrics with any descriptive tag:
[Shout]
[Whimsical]
[Melancholy]
Song Structure Tags
There are other parts to a song than just the verse/chorus pattern.
We can influence the song structure with metatags, although the AI tends to have a mind of its own and follow its own pattern.
[Intro]
This one is notoriously unreliable. It’s probably better to describe it as an instrumental break. [Short Instrumental Intro]
[Hook]
A hook is a repetitive phrase or instrumental. Try repeating a short line 2 – 4 times with or without the label. [Catchy Hook]
[Break]
A break is a few bars of the song where the lead instruments or singer go silent, and the accompanying instruments play. A [Break] can sometimes be used strategically to interrupt the current pattern.
[Break]
[Percussion Break]
[Interlude]
Interlude is a useful tag to create an instrumental section within the lyrics.
[melodic interlude]
[Outro]
An Outro can help to prime the song to end and may create a loop to fade out in post-edit.
Refrain seems to get more ‘creative’ when wrapping up the end of the song, while Big Finish may change the melody or tempo to create a climax.
[Outro]
[Refrain]
[Big Finish]
[End]
An end tag in the lyrics may work best alone as its own clip. Clear the Style Prompt, or add ‘End’ to the style description.
[End]
[Fade Out]
[Fade to End]
See: How do I end the song?
As always, prompting an AI is not like paying someone to edit your music on Fiverr. The reliability of these tags can be influenced by the lyrics, the song cycle, and the AI just being random.
Instrumental Tags
Songs can have instrumental sections that can be prompted the same as [Verse] and [Chorus], but without lyrics, the landmarks aren’t as clear.
An instrumental ‘break’ can replace a verse standing as its section, or might be a short bridge in the music. These seem to work best when only one is used at a time, but adding commas inside the prompt may work. Experiment!
Prompt examples include:
[Break]
[Instrumental Interlude]
[Melodic Bass]
[Percussion Break]
[Syncopated Bass]
[Fingerstyle Guitar Solo]
[Build]
[Bass Drop]
Stay in the genre
The genre is important! You may need to describe the instrument within the Style Prompt if you want to manipulate it with metatags.
A [Bass Drop] is a common feature of EDM genre, but it makes no sense in an acoustic guitar solo.
A [Bluegrass Banjo Interlude] will be easier to conjure within a Country-genre song, but might not work within an Orchestral Symphony….
Then again, it might work if a ‘banjo’ is added to the style prompt.
Experiment with ‘instrumental lyrics’
Suno will sometimes respond to un-singable text as a musical instrument. a few lines of punctuation only might help to force a short instrumental solo.
Less reliable and sometimes hilarious, try onomatopoeic words that mimic the sounds of musical instruments. Often, they are sung as lyrics but sometimes trigger the intended instrument.
[Percussion Break]
. .! .. .!
!! ... ! ! !
[sad trombone]
waah-Waaah-WAAH
[chugging guitar]
chuka-chuka-chuka-chuka
Voice Tags
A singing voice is generated randomly for each song, but we can influence the voice in the style and lyrics prompts.
Genre
The Style and Lyrics prompt will influence the type of voice chosen for your song:
HipHop may default to an urban male
Country will often sing with a Western accent
Jazz may feature a soulful female vocal
Pop vocals are often female
Language
Chirp can sing natively in many languages, even switching languages inside the lyrics. No special prompt is needed, the language is auto-detected.
Gender
Voice and gender can be described within the Style/Genre Prompt, although it is not always reliable:
sultry male singer
female narrator
bass male vocal
Singing Style
Some known style words to try, both in the style description and as lyric prompts:
Gregorian chant
Melismatic
Narration
Spoken Word
Sprechgesang
Emotional
Sultry
Resonant
Ethereal
Lounge Singer
Vocaloid
Metatags
Style vocals can be used as song-section metatags
[Female Narrator]
[Diva Solo]
[Gospel Choir]
[Primal Scream]
[Rap Verse]
Limitations
Suno doesn’t reveal details about how Chirp creates its voices. Some observed limitations include:
child voices hard to prompt for (so far…)
many languages have native accents, but not all
few regional accents, except when associated with a genre (Reggae, Country)
*information gathered from sunoprompt.com*
