Nested repeats and Volta

• Jan 17, 2022 - 00:23

I'm hoping there's a way to construct the described repeat structure for the attached example:

Repeat and Volta test 3x within 4x.mscz

Line 1 works as desired the first time through, but the "Play 3x" (bars 1 and 2) fails on the second pass.

Thanks, scorster

Comments

• Jan 17, 2022 - 04:55

Nested repeats are not part of standard notation and don't make sense in real life - musicians almost invariably trip over them and go back to the "wrong" place (not there is any "right" place, since it's non-standard notation to begin with.

Using a DS or DC, on the other hand, works fine. Just be sure to add text that explicitly says "take repeats" (since the standard is not to), and also check the corresponding option in the Inspector to get MuseScore to honor that. Getting all that to happen more than twice is kind of another matter. You could try to add text instructions in hopes of a human musician making sense out of it, but, chances are good it will be misunderstood.

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• Dec 13, 2024 - 04:30

I don't understand why you say that nested repeats don't make sense in real life. I've been playing them for 45 years for folk dancing.
Here's an example:
Play Tune A twice through (Tune A is 8 bars repeated, plus another 8 bars repeated).
Play Tune B twice through (Tune B is 8 bars repeated, plus another 8 bars repeated).
Then play the whole sequence again.

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• Dec 13, 2024 - 04:36

If you happen to know the tune and understand that is how it goes, then sure, you can guess that this is what that would mean. But in general, there is no standard that would tell someone who doesn’t already know the piece which start repeat goes with which and repeat, if they overlap in any way. That’s why standard notation doesn’t allow for that. And why MuseScore cannot produce meaningful results if you try it, because there is no generally accepted meaning.

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• Dec 13, 2024 - 04:55

I want to use Musescore to produce MP3s that I can practice with.
I would like to be able to do that without having to copy and past large slabs of music.
You don't need any knowledge of a tune to understand "repeat this whole tune," or the meaning of a pair of big square brackets with enclosed repeat dots.

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• Dec 13, 2024 - 13:53

As mentioned, that is what the loop feature is for.

You personally might know the goal is to repeat the whole tune and thus be able to sort out which start repeat goes with which end repeat, but again, some stranger reading the chart wouldn’t be able to guess that. The rules of music notation simply don’t give the reader any way of knowing which start to go back to if the repeats are nested. It’s like an unlabeled fork in the road. If you live in the area, you don’t need a sign - you know which road to take. But a stranger won’t.

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• Dec 13, 2024 - 19:37

The attached chart doens't have any nested repeats. But if you were to add a new end repeat on, say, the last bar of the piece, it would indeed be entirely unclear where it goes back to - bar 18 or bar 1.

Again, if you just want to hear the music played over and over for whatever reason, use the loop feature. If you want there piece played exactly twice, add a DC and tell it to play repeats. Same as you would to tell a human musician to play the whole thing twice.

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• Dec 14, 2024 - 07:13

Sorry, for me playing classical (symphonic) music, it's not so clear. The repeats as such are ok but with the “qualifying” text above each section it looks like you in total have to play part A and B 7 times but it's not clear how this is played with the music in e.g the part Bobby Shaftoe. That being said, I've seen a similar way of writing in Swedish folk music and the few times I've played together with more experienced folk music players, I always get lost.

Also, as long as the music fits on one single page it might be acceptable but for classical music spanning many pages, it would be very difficult to play music with nested repeats. It's sometimes difficult enough with "normal” repeats and DC or DS.

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