Format details

Let's start with just a title and some lyrics:

Scarborough Fair

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

(The title is mandatory. Probably the only mandatory thing in the whole format.)

Chords

The first thing we need are some chords. They are not currently interpreted, you can use any notation you like. The one thing you need is the chord marker, a tilde character: ~. It goes after the chord, as a separator between the chord itself and the syllable it goes together with:

Em~ Are you going to D~ Scarborough Em~ Fair?
G ~ Parsley, Em ~ sage, rose- G ~ ma- A ~ ry and Em ~ thyme

(You may or may not have a space between the chord and the tilde, your choice.)

When chord changes fall on syllables different from the first, we split the word and put the chord in the middle. (We also put a dash at the end of the left syllable, to mean continuation.)

Measures

Time to add some rhythm information. The first thing we need are measure markers, and we use a vertical bar: | for that. When placing them, we need to find out where measures begin and end and how chords and lyrics fit within them.

| Em~ Are you | going to | D~ Scarborough | Em~ Fair? |
| G~ Parsley, | Em~ sage, rose- | G~ ma- A~ ry and | Em~ thyme |

Beats

This is a good start, but we need more clarity about when to sing each syllable and where the accents go. We introduce beat markers, using the backquote: `

| Em~ Are ` ` you | going ` ` to | D~ Scar- ` bo- ` rough | Em~ Fair? ` ` |
| G~ ` Par- ` sley, | Em~ sage, ` ` rose- | G~ ma- ` A~ ry ` and | Em~ thyme ` ` |

This is better. It clearly shows the pauses in the middle of measures 1, 2 and 6. It also shows the delayed start in syllable 5.

There is still a problem in measure 3, though. Can you spot it?

Subbeats

The syllables "Scar" and "rough" fall squarely on the beat; however, "bo" does not! It is delayed and falls later in the beat. We need to split the beat further, and we use the backslash for that: \ .

Now we can express that delay:

| Em~ Are ` ` you | going ` ` to | D~ Scar- ` \ bo- ` rough | Em~ Fair? ` ` |

Now we can clearly see the delay.

This is as far as the core LCR format goes.

Limitations

The following characters have special meaning and cannot be used inside the lyrics:

• ~ tilde: chord marker
• | vertical bar: measure marker
• ` backquote: beat marker
• \ backslash: subbeat marker
• = equal sign: metadata field and section title marker