Repeats after a dal segno

• May 7, 2022 - 21:50

I have a score, and what I wanted to do was repeat the A section, which itself has a repeat of the first system. So, I figured I'd just put a dal segno at the end of the section, and put the segno at the start of it, and bob's your uncle.

However, when I did this, it didn't repeat the first system of that section, as indicated with the normal repeats. They were ignored after the playback skipped back to the segno.

It this a bug, or is it supposed to behave this way? Is this how a human person would read that score I created?


Comments

It is common musical practice to not play repeats on a DS. However, sometimes repeats are wanted and MuseScore allows this practice also. Right click on the DS and tick the box "Play repeats".

See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/repeats-and-jumps#jumps

It would also be good to add a note to the score like "play repeats on DS" or edit the DS text to read "DS con rep" for the benefit of human musicians that you hand the score to.

In reply to by SteveBlower

I don't seem to get a tickbox when right clicking the DS text, nor the symbol itself. Oh wait maybe I need inspector open or something.

Oh ya, that was it. Left click selects it, and the checkbox is at the bottom of inspector. Thanks a lot!

EDIT: it didn't work when I tried it. Any ideas why? The play repeats toggle is on, the checkbox is checked. I used D.S. al Fine, and added my own string of text (play repeats) in D.S. text box.

In reply to by SteveBlower

You got it! Thanks. I thought D.S. Al fine just meant "play to the end" lol. :facepalm:

Which makes me wonder, are there cases where using this makes more sense? Or using to coda? I noticed there are a couple different ways to do this same sort of thing, but I'm not sure which would be used in which situations, or any conventions related to skips and jumps.

In reply to by a-muse-sing

Say you have a structure AABA you would normally write this as ||: A :|| (Fine) B (DC al Fine)

The route map would be
Play A.
Repeat A.
Play B
Go to start of A
Play A
Stop at Fine.

Note the convention that A is not repeated after the DC. And that is MuaeScore's default behaviour.

A coda (literally "tail") is a section that goes afte everything else (clue in the translated name).

So you might have

||: A :|| (to coda) B (DC al Coda) (Coda) C

The road map would be

Play A
Repeat A
Play B
Go to start of A
Play A
Skip to Coda
Play C
Stop (at the end)

Giving AABAC Which is quite a common structure.

There are other more complicated options like DS (Dal Segno) go to sign - useful if you have an intro that you don't want to repeat. And voltas which give you alternative endings - useful if you have an AABA structure where B is in a different key and you want to have a nice modulation to that new key second time round the A section but not the first time round.

In reply to by Timothy Mawson

There are a number of problems I see in this score. The end repeat in bar 24 has no corresponding start repeat. it also has a D.C. in the same measure, making it unclear which you actually mean - repeat or DC.
Similar for measure 25. I'm guessing maybe you intend the repeat in bar 24 to go all the way back the beginning, but that would create a repeat within a repeat which doesn't make sense either. So, neither a human musician nor MuseScore can really follow this as is.

In reply to by a-muse-sing

You wrote:
I noticed there are a couple different ways to do this same sort of thing, but I'm not sure which would be used in which situations, or any conventions related to skips and jumps.

While many scores (think of pop songs) have conventional verse/chorus structures, other compositions require more complicated roadmaps for repeats, voltas, codas. The basic idea is to use the available repeats and jumps tools to reduce the need to write out repeated sections, yet facilitate a playback sequence which is understandable to a musician playing from the score.

Here's an example of what not to do:
Happy Birthday.mscz
;-)

If you have a particular score you have questions about, please attach it to your post.

Commenting in 2024 bc it's slightly different and this is the first thing to pop up. Double click the DS. Should open the "Properties" tab and have the "Jump" header in it. Check the box "Play Repeats."

In reply to by MXL5

You do not need to "double-click the DS" although that will (usually?) work. Simply select (click to highlight) the DS, then go to the Properties tab at upper left. It is displayed by default (and it is needed often enough that it's usually best to keep it displayed)

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