Jumps and proper playback
Hi everyone,
You have been so wonderful in helping me. I hope I can indulge you again. I have a piece that I find difficult to annotate for proper playback. hopefully I can make sense explaining what is intended. There are 5 verses to this hymn. To make things really fun, when verses 3 and 5 are sung, there is a harmony part added to the verses part. Harmony appears in the verses section of the original score, but it’s only sung for verses 3 and 5.
Not counting pickup, measures 1-12 are the piano intro.
measure 13 is refrain beginning
refrain ending #1 is for after verses 1-5
refrain ending #2 final
verses start at measure 35
Intro - refrain - verse 1 - refrain - verse 2 - refrain - verse 3 with harmony - refrain - verse 4 - refrain - verse 5 with harmony - refrain to final
That's the road map.
What I have annotated so far is in the same style as the score itself. Hopefully it makes sense, as to what the intent is. What do I need to make this play correctly? Verses 3 and 5, I'm guessing, will have to appear elsewhere in the score, since they have harmony as well as the existing melody. I'd appreciate any help I can get. I'd like this to look as similar to the original score as possible, but it's not critical.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| This_Holy_Light test.mscz | 18.68 KB |
Comments
This road map works, but it may be longer than you want. It stays away from confusing imbedded and nested repeats.
Refrain verse 1. repeats for refrain verse 2. Refrain and verse three with harmony. Refrain and verse 4 written out. DS for refrain and verse 5 with harmony. "To Coda" before Refrain and verse 4 jumps to Coda which is refrain and final.
In reply to This road map works, but it… by bobjp
I'm having trouble following along on your score. could you include measure numbers for which sections are which parts, refrain, verse w/o harmony, verse w/harmony?
Also, what do you mean by verse 4 written out?
In reply to I'm having trouble following… by nozarjeff
You have 5 instances of refrain and verse. Plus refrain and ending. In my version, refrain an verse are 9 measure sections. So..
Refrain and verse 1. repeat sign.
Refrain and verse 2. Move on to...
Refrain and verse 3 (harmony), move on to...
Refrain and verse 4.
DS to refrain and verse 3 section for refrain and verse 5 (harmony)
To Coda for refrain and ending.
You probably would prefer a more concise method. I get it.
In reply to You have 5 instances of… by bobjp
Yes, I gotta admit, more concise would be nice. I’d be happy to get it to work without the 3rd and 5 verse harmony accompanying the melody.
I think what’s throwing me off is that the refrain, as it appears in the score, has a 1-5 volta, and a final volta. The 1-5 volta ends with a “To verses,” and the verses are the last thing in the score. As a human, it’s easy to know to sing the refrain and first volta before the 5 verses, and end the hymn by singing the refrain with the second volta. I’m no musician, but I don’t think that’s how voltas usually work. Voltas usually take you back to the beginning of the same section by using a repeat, right? The first volta in this hymn throws you to a different part of the score for the verses, which end in a D.S., and the segno appears at the beginning of the refrain.
In reply to Yes, I gotta admit, more… by nozarjeff
If you want concision, merging the vocal parts down to two staves would save you a lot of space. Select range on both staves, Tools > Implode.
Now that you've saved all that space, just use a repeat barline for the refrain/verse combo and write out the final refrain. Maybe by some hackery it would be possible to insert a "last time to coda," but that wouldn't be very intuitive to human singers who only see five sets of lyrics and wouldn't normally start repeating a sixth time. From what I've seen of hymns, this is a pretty typical way to do it.
In reply to If you want concision,… by Rose Egbert
Thanks. Pretty much all of our score sources are closed scores. I use 4 staves for vocals so I can isolate each part on my iPad app when I practice. I sing bass, and it’s distracting to me to hear tenor also when I only want to hear the bass part. My goal here (at least that I have to settle for) is proper playback on the iPad. It’s nice to be concise, but I guess this score is a little complicated for a computer to read. I'll probably go your way and forget that verses 3 and 5 have added harmony.
Two takeaways:
(1) MuseScore is not (yet) capable of playing selected staves/voice only on a certain repeat. As such you will need to write out the "with harmony" verses in a different set of measures from those without it.
(2) Since your final part only happens at the end, it makes a lot more sense (musically) to actually place it at the end and treat it as a coda.
Resulting score with minimal duplication attached. Use normal repeats for the (refrain - verse) recurring pattern. Then use a volta to select which variant of the verse should be chosen for any given repeat.
In reply to Two takeaways: (1) MuseScore… by jeetee
Thanks. That is exactly the type of score I was looking for, very concise and proper playback. I hadn't mentioned it in the thread, but the verses are sung in unison, and the harmony part is written in bass clef, so I have melody on SA, and harmony on TB. The non-harmony verses have melody on SATB, with TB down an octave.