Most Suno prompt guides are a list of tags to copy. That worked, more or less, in v3 and v4, when the model needed a nudge toward a genre and filled in the rest. v6 is different. It reads a lot more of what you write, and it does more of what you say, so a vague prompt gets you a confident, generic song.
This guide goes field by field: what each part of the Create form is for, what v6 does with it, and the habits that make the difference between a song you keep and the twelfth reroll. Controls move between Suno releases, so check each one in your own composer. The principles have held since v6 launched on September 9, 2026.
Which v6 to pick
v6 comes in three variants, and they behave differently enough that the model choice is part of the prompt:
- v6 is the default, and the one to use when you've written a precise prompt and want it followed.
- v6-wild takes more liberties: genre blends, odd choices, results further from what you typed. Good for sketching. Bad for a final take of a song you've already planned.
- v6-mini is faster and lighter, and the only one on the free plan. Fine for testing lyrics and structure before you spend credits on the full model.
All three run up to eight minutes a generation, but an eight-minute song is rarely what you want. More on length below.
Styles: what the band plays
Styles is the most important field and the most abused. It isn't a mood board or a list of tags. It's an instruction to session musicians who've never heard of you. Write it in this order, because the start of the field carries more weight than the end:
- Lead genre tag, tempo and feel. The genre in Suno's own wording first, then BPM, then one mood word: "uk garage, 132 BPM, flirty."
- Production era or colour. One phrase: "turn-of-the-millennium 2-step, warm MPC swing."
- The lead vocal. Gender, timbre, delivery. One sentence.
- Drums, then bass. The parts that make the genre what it is.
- Keys, guitars, textures. Six at most, and pick one hero part.
- The arrangement. Every sung section by name, with its delivery. Bar counts for the intro, and for drops and the outro in club genres.
- Mix placement. Where things sit: "vocal upfront and dry-ish, sub tight and centred."
- The ending. "Ends cold after the final hook."
Two rules sit on top of that order.
Name parts, not vibes. "Dreamy summer vibes" gets you Suno's average idea of dreamy summer. "Detuned Juno pads, tape-saturated drum machine, a plucked bass that only plays on the one" gets you a song. The more instruments and performance verbs you give it, the less it has to guess.
Placement words beat quality words. "Radio-ready, professionally mastered, high quality" describes nothing Suno can play, and every v6 render is mastered anyway. Those words cost characters you need for the bass part. "Polished low end" is fine, because it's attached to something.
The 1,000-character budget
The Styles field takes about 1,000 characters. Past that, the end gets cut, and in practice the last couple of hundred characters carry less weight even when they fit. Aim for about 800. If you're over, cut in this order: bar counts that aren't the intro, extra texture parts, mix detail. Never cut the opening genre clause or the ending sentence.
Here's a complete UK garage Styles at 567 characters, from our genre prompt guides:
uk garage, 132 BPM, flirty. Turn-of-the-millennium 2-step, warm MPC swing. Smooth R&B lead with stacked harmonies and pitched chop responses. Skippy 2-step drums with swung hats, a bouncy sub answering the vocal, pitched and time-stretched vocal chop responses, organ stabs, a rewind into the hook. Arrangement: intro 8 bars, verse 16 bars, pre-hook 8 bars, hook 16 bars, verse 2 16 bars, hook 16 bars, break 8 bars, final hook 16 bars. Vocal upfront and dry-ish, sub tight and centered, hats bright and wide, chops panned and delayed. Ends cold after the final hook.
Notice what's missing: no artist names (Suno blocks them, and describing the sound works better anyway; here's how), no "no autotune", no "masterpiece".
Exclude: where the negatives go
"No trap hi-hats" contains the words trap hi-hats. Models are bad at "no", and a negative in Styles regularly adds what it bans. Every negative belongs in Exclude styles, as short category words, fewer than ten of them:
four-on-the-floor kick, trap hi-hats, rock guitars, orchestral strings
Pick them by what v6 actually drifts toward in your genre, not by everything you dislike. UK garage drifts toward a straight house kick; drill drifts toward a melodic pop hook; country drifts toward arena rock. And never put an Exclude word in Styles. If strings is excluded, "string stabs" in Styles is a coin toss.
Lyrics: headers that carry direction
v6 listens to section headers, and it listens harder when they say how the section is performed. A bare [Verse] leaves the delivery to chance. A header with a cue after a pipe tells the singer and the band what changes:
[Intro | shuffled drums and stabs]
[Verse | close and conversational]
[Pre-Hook | rising, building into the hook]
[Hook | full voice, hook up front]
[Break | drums drop, pitched vocal chops]
[Final Hook | full voice, biggest lift]
[End | clean ending]
Three habits make these work:
Say every cue twice. If the header says [Bridge | whispered, piano only], the arrangement sentence in Styles should say "bridge whispered, piano only" too. A direction Suno reads in one field only is a suggestion. In both, it's a plan.
Keep directions out of parentheses. In the lyric box, text in parentheses gets sung. "(softly)" becomes a backing vocal singing "softly". Put directions in the header, after the pipe.
Write out every repeat. [Repeat Chorus] and (x2) are a gamble in v6. Paste the chorus again, word for word. Every chorus before the last should be identical. If you want a lift, change one line of the final one and keep the title line.
Length and the ending
The biggest single complaint about v6 is songs that wander: a fine first two minutes, then a third verse nobody wrote, a key change, a long fade. Two things stop it.
End on a cue. The last line of the lyrics should be an ending header, [End | clean ending] or similar, and Styles should name the ending in its last sentence. Without both, Suno decides where the song stops.
Plan for about three minutes. An arrangement of 3:00 to 3:30 at your BPM holds together. You can work out the length from bars: bars × 240 ÷ BPM is seconds. At 132 BPM, the UK garage arrangement above is 104 bars, about 3:09.
Lines Suno can sing
v6 is better at long lines than older models, but it still rushes them. Most genres want verse lines under about ten syllables and hook lines under eight; house and dance tracks want shorter still. The free syllable counter counts every line and checks verse 2 against verse 1. Choruses should be shorter than verses, the title should be the first or last line of the chorus, and verse 2 should mirror verse 1's shape (line count, line lengths) with new words.
The other half of the lyric is not sounding like every other AI song. Neon lights, shattered dreams, dancing in the rain and fire in my soul are the fingerprints. Our guide to lyrics that don't sound AI covers that in depth, and the free lyric checker flags the clichés, the long lines and the mismatched repeats.
Settings for a final take
The prompt is half of it. The other half is not letting the composer rewrite it:
- Variety at 0. Above zero, Suno is allowed to rework your Styles before it generates. Great for exploring; the most common reason a precise prompt disappears. More on that here.
- My Taste off, no Magic Wand. Both add words you didn't choose.
- Style Influence raised for a long, detailed prompt, around 70 to 85% to start.
- Vocal gender set when there's one singer. For a duet, leave it on auto and tag the singers in the lyrics instead (how to do that).
Then generate two to four takes and judge them against a single test you decided before listening: does the hook land in the first chorus, does it end where you planned? Keep the one that passes. With downloads now capped per month on paid plans, a test you set up front saves more than credits.
Quick checklist
- v6 for a final take; v6-wild for sketching
- Styles in order: genre + tempo + feel, era, vocal, drums, bass, textures, arrangement, mix, ending
- About 800 characters, no artist names, no quality words
- Negatives in Exclude only, under ten
- A cue after the pipe in every header, said again in Styles
- Repeats written out; identical choruses; an
[End]header - About three minutes of bars at your BPM
- Variety 0, My Taste off, Style Influence up
Shortcuts
If you'd rather start from a working prompt than a blank field, there's a Suno prompt for 90 genres, each with its tempo, Exclude list, arrangement and cued headers, all passing the Styles checker. And if you want the whole thing built around your own idea and your own sound, that's what Session Sheet does: Styles in this order and inside the budget, lyrics with every cue said twice, and a settings card for each take. Your first songs are free.