Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your CHO file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert CHO to another file type
To convert CHO sheets to another format, you need OpenSong or other Text software.
Convert a file to CHO
To convert other file formats to the "Chord Sheet File" file type, you need software like OpenSong or a similar tool.
About CHO files
The .cho file format primarily functions as a ChordPro chord sheet file. It stores song lyrics with musical chords embedded in square brackets. This format allows musicians to read and print lead sheets. A secondary use is for Character Object skeleton rig files in the Valve Source Engine, originally tied to Softimage XSI. Finally, it serves as music analysis project files for zplane deCoda. Opening these files natively causes immediate problems. While ChordPro .cho files are plain text readable in any basic text editor, standard text editors cannot dynamically render the chords above the lyrics. The formatting breaks entirely on mobile screens. You need specific notation software like OpenSong to display them correctly. The 3D character rig variant is even harder to manage. It relies on discontinued software and closed development pipelines. Sharing a raw .cho file often results in the recipient seeing broken text or unreadable binary code. To solve this, you must convert the file. For sheet music, convert .cho to PDF. This freezes the formatting for reliable printing and sharing. If you need to edit the text across platforms, convert it to TXT or DOCX.
Convert.Guru analyzes your CHO file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert CHO file to MP3, WAV, AAC, FLAC, OGG, WMA, M4A, AIFF, OPUS, ALAC, APE or WV, you can use OpenSong or similar software from the "Song Lyrics and Chords" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert MIDI, AAC, TTA, AU, WV, DTS, MID, FLAC, RA, MP3, PCM or WAV files to CHO, try OpenSong or another comparable tool in the "Song Lyrics and Chords" category.
The CHO Converter Story
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our CHO converter.