OzBCoz Help
If you have issues please email me by clicking jim@ozbcoz.com
OzBCoz is a songbook site for players of stringed instruments: ukulele, guitar, banjo, mandolin and more. Several thousand songs, free, with the chords drawn for whichever instrument you play.
You do not need to be logged in to read this help, or to use most of the site.
If you ever get lost, click the frog at the top left of any page, or The Help Start Page in the sidebar, to come back here.
New here? Start with these three
Almost everyone who arrives wants the same three things. Get these and you can use the site properly.
1. Find your song
Go to the Songs Index and type part of the title into the search box. You do not need to get it exactly right.
Some songs appear more than once. That is deliberate, sometimes they are by different artists, they may have a different arrangement or they may be written out in different keys.
2. Put it in a key you can sing
This is the one most people never find, and it is the most useful thing on the site.
If a song sits too high or too low for your voice, you do not need a different version. Open the song and use CHANGE KEY to move the whole thing up or down. Every chord moves with it, so it still sounds like itself.
You can't change the key while you are in EDIT so click on Done , change the key and go back into EDIT
Sing the first line. If you are straining, shift it and try again.
3. Make it comfortable to read
Three things worth setting straight away, all in Settings on the song page:
- Your instrument, so the chord diagrams match what you are holding
- Text size, larger if you are reading from a music stand
- Where the chords sit, beside the words or on their own line above them
Set the instrument once and every song you open afterwards will look the same way. Everything else can be made to apply to every song in Default Settings.
💡 Handy hint: That is genuinely all you need. Everything below is for when you want more, and none of it is required.
Finding songs
- The Songs Index — search and filter the whole library
- The Chords Page — look up any chord shape on its own
- ChordPro Files — download songs for apps like OnSong
Playing from a song
- Song Pages — everything you can do while a song is open
- Settings — fonts, diagrams, spacing and colours for the song you are reading
- Default Settings — make your choices apply to every song
- Auto-scroll — let the song scroll while you play
If reading is difficult
- Larger text and clearer fonts — bigger print, Low Vision and Dyslexia fonts, stronger contrast
- Screen reader mode — chord names written out in words so they can be read aloud
Keeping and sharing your songs
- Favourites — your personal song library
- Multi-Faves — add a batch of songs at once
- Shared Favourites — one list for a whole group or club
Adding your own songs
- ChordPro Directives — the full guide to the format
Your account and the site
- Logging in and registering — free, and only needed for some things
- Menus — what everything in the top bar does
How the site works
Every song is stored as a ChordPro file. That is plain text, with the words written out normally and the chord names in square brackets where the change happens.
The site reads those files and draws them as song pages, adding the chord diagrams for your instrument, the colours and everything else you can adjust in Settings. It is also why the same song can be shown in any key, for any instrument, without anyone rewriting it.