How to Write Suno Prompts: Structure, Style Tags, Templates
Learn how to write Suno prompts that control genre, mood and instruments. Includes a fill-in template, a style tag cheat sheet and three common mistakes.
Take the same lyrics, swap in a different set of prompts, and you may end up with two completely different songs. A prompt is not a pile of adjectives. It works more like a brief for an arranger: the more specific you are, the better the model knows what you want.
The five parts of a prompt
A prompt that works usually stacks these in order, from broad to narrow:
| Order | What it describes | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Genre and era | city pop, 90s Hong Kong style, lo-fi hip hop |
| 2 | Mood and atmosphere | healing, letting go after a breakup, alone late at night |
| 3 | Lead instruments | electric piano, fingerpicked acoustic guitar, saxophone |
| 4 | Rhythm and tempo | mid-tempo, slow rock, light drums, no obvious climax |
| 5 | Vocals and production texture | female vocals, breathy, close to the mic, vintage tape feel |
A template you can use as-is
Replace what is in the brackets with your own details and you have a usable prompt:
[Genre] + a song about [subject], the mood is [mood], the lead instruments are [instruments], the rhythm is [fast/slow description], sung by [male/female] vocals, overall it should sound [production texture].
A filled-in example: city pop, a song about walking on the beach on a summer evening, the mood is relaxed with a touch of nostalgia, the lead instruments are electric piano and saxophone, mid-tempo rhythm with light, upbeat drums, female vocals, overall it should sound like a vintage 80s recording.
Style word cheat sheet
| Direction | Common words |
|---|---|
| Pop | pop, city pop, synth pop, dream pop |
| Rap | hip hop, trap, boom bap, lo-fi hip hop |
| Electronic | house, techno, ambient, future bass |
| Rock | rock, indie rock, punk, post rock |
| Folk | folk, acoustic, country, ballad |
| Chinese style | guofeng, traditional Chinese instruments, pipa, dizi, pentatonic scale |
Style words are usually more accurate in English, while mood and scene descriptions read more naturally in Chinese. Mixing the two is fine.
Three techniques that noticeably improve results
- Limit the number of elements: cram in seven or eight instruments at once and the usual result is that none of them can be heard clearly. Three or fewer lead elements is the most reliable.
- Use "don't" to exclude: instead of describing what you want over and over, add exclusions like "no electronic drums" or "no high-note belting".
- Keep half fixed, change only half: when you are hunting for the best version, keep the genre and mood description and change only the instruments or the rhythm. The difference is easier to hear.
Three common mistakes
- Writing only "a good song". There is too little information, so the model can only guess.
- Putting lyrics in the description box. The description box controls style; lyrics have their own input field.
- Throwing everything out after one unsatisfying generation. The same prompt produces two different takes each time, so listen to both before you adjust.
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