Suno takes two things from you: a short description of the style and, if you want words, the lyrics. Everything else, the melody, the arrangement, the voice, the mix, it decides from those two inputs. That makes a Suno prompt different from a ChatGPT prompt. You are writing a brief for a producer who will never ask a follow-up question, so the brief has to carry the genre, the tempo, the mood, the instruments and the vocal in a line or two, and the lyrics have to tell the model where the verses and the chorus are.
The prompts below are organised by what people make with Suno: a song for a video, a jingle, a track in a specific genre, an instrumental for a podcast, a personal song for an occasion. Each one has a style line you paste into the style field and, where it needs words, a lyric skeleton with the section tags Suno reads. Change the words in brackets. The structure is the part that took the testing.
How a Suno prompt is built
The style line is a comma-separated list, and order matters less than specificity. Name the genre, then one or two sub-genre or era words, the tempo as a feeling or a number, the lead instrument, the vocal type and the mood. Keep it under about 120 characters; Suno weights the first words most and ignores a paragraph.
Lyrics use section tags in square brackets: [Intro], [Verse], [Pre-Chorus], [Chorus], [Bridge], [Outro]. A chorus that repeats word for word comes back as a real chorus; a chorus with different words each time comes back as another verse. Write four lines per verse and keep the lines a similar length, because Suno fits the melody to the syllables you give it.
Two settings change everything. Instrumental on means the lyrics field is ignored and the style line does all the work. Custom mode is where you control lyrics and style separately; the simple mode writes the lyrics for you from a description, which is fine for a joke and wrong for anything you will publish.
Suno style prompts by genre
Paste these into the style field. Each has been written to produce the genre on the first run rather than a generic pop track with a label on it.
- Indie folk: indie folk, acoustic guitar fingerpicking, soft male vocal, close harmonies in the chorus, warm, slow tempo, lo-fi room sound
- Synthwave: synthwave, 1984 retro, analog synth arpeggios, gated reverb drums, 110 bpm, instrumental, neon night drive
- Hip hop: boom bap hip hop, dusty jazz sample, hard drums, male rapper, confident delivery, 90 bpm, vinyl crackle
- Country: modern country, telecaster lead, steel guitar, female vocal with a slight twang, mid tempo, big singalong chorus
- Lo-fi: lo-fi hip hop, mellow Rhodes piano, soft drums, tape hiss, instrumental, 75 bpm, rainy afternoon
- Pop: upbeat pop, punchy drums, bright synth stabs, female vocal, catchy chorus with layered harmonies, 120 bpm, radio ready
- Rock: alternative rock, driving distorted guitars, live drums, male vocal with grit, anthemic chorus, 140 bpm
- Jazz: cool jazz trio, brushed drums, upright bass, piano lead, instrumental, late night, slow
- Cinematic: cinematic orchestral, slow build, strings and low brass, taiko drums in the second half, epic, instrumental, trailer
- Afrobeats: afrobeats, log drum, bright guitar riff, smooth male vocal, 102 bpm, summer, danceable
- Metal: melodic metal, down-tuned guitars, double kick drums, clean chorus vocal over harsh verses, 160 bpm
- Ambient: ambient, slow evolving pads, no drums, field recording of wind, instrumental, meditative, 10 minutes feel
Suno lyric prompts with structure
A skeleton that works for most songs. Replace the bracketed lines and keep the tags.
[Intro]
(instrumental)
[Verse 1]
[Line about the place and the time]
[Line about what the singer sees]
[Line about what they want]
[Line that sets up the chorus]
[Chorus]
[The one line the song is about]
[A second line that rhymes with it]
[The one line again]
[A closing line]
[Verse 2]
[Same shape as verse 1, the story moves forward]
[Chorus]
(repeat exactly)
[Bridge]
[Two lines that change the angle]
[Chorus]
(repeat exactly)
[Outro]
[The chorus line once, quieter]
Three lyric prompts for common jobs:
- Birthday song: style line "acoustic pop, ukulele, cheerful, handclaps, female vocal, 100 bpm". Lyrics: a verse that names the person and one true detail about them, a chorus that repeats their name twice, a second verse with a memory, the chorus again.
- Brand jingle: style line "jingle, bright, 15 seconds, piano and claps, group vocal". Lyrics: one [Chorus] of four short lines with the brand name in lines one and four. No verse. Generate three and keep the one you can hum.
- Lullaby: style line "lullaby, soft female vocal, music box, very slow, gentle, no drums". Lyrics: two verses of four lines each with simple words, the same last line in both.
Instrumental prompts for video and podcasts
Turn instrumental on and use the style line alone. Say the use and the length feel, since Suno paces a track differently for a background bed than for a song.
- Podcast intro: podcast intro, upbeat electronic, clean, builds for 10 seconds then settles, instrumental, 30 seconds
- YouTube background: corporate background, light acoustic guitar and piano, positive, steady, no drops, instrumental, loopable
- Product video: minimal tech, soft synth pulse, clean percussion, modern, confident, instrumental, 60 seconds
- Study playlist: lo-fi study beats, warm piano, soft vinyl drums, instrumental, calm, 80 bpm
- Documentary: ambient documentary score, piano and strings, thoughtful, slow, instrumental, no melody hook
Fixing a Suno prompt that did not work
When the track is wrong, change one thing. If the genre is off, the first two words of the style line are wrong; put the genre first and remove any word that belongs to another genre. If the vocal is wrong, name it precisely: "soft female vocal", "deep male baritone", "rap, fast delivery". If the chorus does not land, your chorus lines differ between repeats or the lines are too long; cut each to eight syllables and repeat the block exactly. If the song ends abruptly, add an [Outro] tag with one line. If the mix sounds like a demo, add "studio quality, clean mix" at the end of the style line.
Generate at least two versions of every prompt. Suno produces a pair by default, and the second is often the one that works. Keep a document of the style lines that produced tracks you kept, with the genre in the heading; after a month that document is your own prompt library for music, which is how the written prompts in the prompt library started.
Where Suno prompts fit with the rest
A song usually goes with something: a video, a campaign, a podcast. The video script prompts in the video ad scripts subcategory write the words the track sits under, and the scripts and storytelling prompts build the longer pieces. For the visuals, the art and design prompts cover covers and thumbnails. The music prompt is the last step, written once the script says what the track has to do.
