Skip to main content
[Song] is a .chart file’s first section. It gives the chart’s resolution, and may repeat metadata from song.ini, such as the song’s name and artist:
Each line names one value, as Named entries describes. Keys are case-sensitive.

​
Resolution

Resolution is the number of ticks in a beat. Required: one Resolution line, whose value is a whole number from 1 up, written in digits without quotation marks.

​
Metadata

song.ini holds the song’s metadata. [Song] may repeat any of these keys:
  • Text is written in quotation marks: Name = "Song Name".
  • Times are written in seconds, as digits with an optional - before them and an optional decimal part, without quotation marks: PreviewStart = 45.5. Required: this form. Recommended: at most three decimals.
  • Required: a Name that is the song’s title, not TEMPO TRACK or midi_export, which some converters wrote in its place.
Edge case: times in milliseconds. Scanners change a time to milliseconds differently, so it can differ by 1 millisecond between them. Clone Hero and scan-chart round up, and YARG rounds down. A decimal time isn’t stored exactly, so PreviewStart = 1.001 is 1,002 milliseconds in Clone Hero and 1,000 in YARG. The song.ini keys hold milliseconds, so they’re exact. Edge case: Year after , . Older charts, and charts Moonscraper saves, write Year = ", 2002": the comma made the year look better in Guitar Hero III. A scanner removes a leading , , so it means the same as Year = "2002". YARG also removes a leading , without the space. scan-chart’s exporter writes Year without the , . When it saves an edited song, it keeps an existing line’s form. Edge case: PreviewEnd = 0. It means there’s no preview end: a preview can’t end at the start of the song. Moonscraper writes it in every chart.

​
[Song] and song.ini

A song folder holds a song.ini file. See Files in a song folder. Required: when both [Song] and song.ini set a key from the table, the same value in both. Times are compared in milliseconds, and Year without its leading , . A scanner reads the metadata from song.ini:
  • It takes the name, artist, album, genre, year and charter from song.ini alone, even when song.ini leaves one of them out.
  • It takes Offset, PreviewStart and PreviewEnd from [Song] only when song.ini doesn’t set delay, preview_start_time or preview_end_time. A delay of 0 and a preview_end_time of 0 count as not set.
  • It may ignore Difficulty, as Clone Hero and scan-chart do. YARG takes it as diff_band when song.ini doesn’t set diff_band, or sets it to 0.

​
Deprecated

  • An Offset other than 0. Line the notes up with the tempo map and the audio’s leading silence instead. A scanner still applies Offset, but only when song.ini doesn’t set delay.

​
Ignored

A scanner ignores every other key. An exporter may keep them as written. Older chart editors wrote some of them:
  • Audio file names, such as MusicStream and GuitarStream. Games find the audio by file name instead. See Audio. A new chart leaves them out: a chart editor keeps a charter’s choice of audio file in its own settings. Moonscraper still finds a .chart’s audio only through these keys.
  • Player2, MediaType and others, which no game reads.

​
Invalid forms

A scanner reads a file with no [Song] section, or no Resolution in it, with a resolution of 192. scan-chart’s saving adds Resolution = 192.
A scanner reads the value’s leading digits, so Resolution = 480.5 reads as 480. YARG’s chart loader reads every character as a digit, so Resolution = 192.5 is 19185 there. A scanner refuses a file whose Resolution doesn’t start with a digit, or is 0.
A scanner removes the quotation marks, so Resolution = "480" reads as 480. YARG’s song list reads a quoted value as 0, and doesn’t list the song. scan-chart saves the line as it is.
A scanner uses the last one, as Clone Hero, scan-chart and YARG’s song list do. YARG’s chart loader uses the first.
A scanner uses the first line of the key that has a value. YARG’s song list uses the last line, even an empty one.
Clone Hero and scan-chart read an exponent, a + and quotation marks around the number, so both of these are 0.1 seconds. YARG reads only a sign, digits and a decimal point, so it reads 1e-1 as 1 second, and a quoted time as 0. A decimal comma, such as Offset = 0,1, gives no time in Clone Hero and scan-chart. scan-chart saves the line as it is. See Nonstandard files.
A scanner takes the metadata from the keys of the table in [Song], except Length, and may ignore Difficulty: scan-chart reads it as diff_band, and Clone Hero ignores it. YARG doesn’t list the song. See Files in a song folder.
A scanner uses song.ini, as described above. When scan-chart saves an edited song, [Song] takes song.ini’s values. A key that only [Song] sets is removed from it, except Offset, PreviewStart and PreviewEnd, which are copied into song.ini, since scanners read them when song.ini doesn’t set them.
Some converters wrote these instead of the song’s name. A scanner ignores that line and every metadata line after it, as Clone Hero and scan-chart do. Clone Hero doesn’t list such a song when its folder has no song.ini. YARG reads the line as the song’s name. scan-chart saves the section as it is.