DC al Fine causing problem in playback

• Oct 26, 2015 - 16:20

I am curious about the effect of a "DC al Fine". I think there is a bug affecting playback

I have just finished working on a string quintet arrangement of Handel's "Water Music". (Score attached). Movement 5 and movement 6 both require a "DC al Fine". However, when I was checking it through, the playback didn't work correctly. On encountering the first "DC al Fine" at the end of Number 5, I was taken back to the beginning of the whole suite, ie Number 1 , not the beginning of Number 5. I stopped the playback and selected the first note of Number 6. Pressing the space bar (for play) did not work - nothing happened. The only way to get the playback to continue was to delete the "DC al fine" mark at the end of Number 5. The playback then continued (either from playing from the last few bars of Number 5 and moving on or playing from the first note of Number 6.)

However, the same problem occurred at the end of Number 6, again necessitating the removal of the "DC al fine" mark, before being able to move on to Number 7.

Admittedly this is a small problem, and for checking purposes can easily be overcome by removing the offending DC markings, but it is annoying. Is this a known bug in multi-movement scores? Is there a cure?

I am using MS 2.0.2 on Windows 8.
Any comments would be gratefully received.
Andrew

Attachment Size
Selection from The Water Music.mscz 54.27 KB

Comments

• Aug 17, 2017 - 14:06

Hi, I renew this topic because of a curious comportment of MS 2.

I've got two sections :
||: A :|| B ||
At the end of B, I've got a D.C. al Fine. The Fine is at the end of A.
If I put the section break at the end of B, I'm correctly driven AABA then jump to the next section, but with a 3s pause between B and the return of A and no pause between Fine and the next section.
If I put the section break at the end of A, I'm correctly driven AABA, but with a 3s pause between A and it's return, and the jump is too far qnd goes to the 3d section instead of the 2nd!

Well, I'm don't really undeerstand how I can have a correct playback and a 3 second pause at the Fine?

Thank you in advance

Reply

• Aug 17, 2017 - 14:39

There is a problem with section breaks, that the are applied before D.C. and D.S. If you right click the section break you can change the pause to 0, that will fix your pause before returning to the beginning.

To enter the 3 second pause between sections you will need to use a caesura. This will need to be after the section break. Since you cannot put it before a note, you will need to enter it in a measure.

My suggestion is to add an instrument to the list. You can adjust the measure duration to what ever duration you want. You can even make it last exactly 3 seconds (3 1/4 notes if you have a tempo of 60). In this case no caesura is necessary. You can shorten it to the minimum possible duration if you like and add a caesura after the rest. Now that you have playback fixed, you need to address display.

You have an extra instrument and an extra measure. In the instrument list you can mark it as not visible. You can then right click the extra measure, select measure properties and mark all staves as invisible. You will probably want to put a page or line break at the end of this measure to prevent a space being inserted after the instrument names in the next section.

Reply

• Aug 17, 2017 - 15:03

Hi, mike320, thnk you for answering.
I know it's always possible to make a sort of "bidouillage" to have the playback correct but I think it more as a bug. It'll be very much better if the section break were evaluated after D.C., D.S. and repeats.
Do you want me to fill a bug entry?

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