How do you deal with repeats on single instruments in large scores?
Hi everybody,
when I start creating a score, I often use repeats to save time and space for let's say a basic piano part. As the score grows by adding instruments in the end I always have to remove or better "expand" all the repeats if at least one of the other instruments plays different things during the 1st (e.g. not play at all) and 2nd repetition.
As repeats are always "global" the (valuable) information in the single part "here you actually do the same thing twice" gets lost by the expanded repeat. In my dream space Musescore would be able to keep the repeats in the connected (single) parts and expand them in the full score, but I can imagine that this is fairly complex to achieve.
How do you handle this? I there a special trick in notation I simply don't know? Of course, I could write separate scores for the parts indicating the repeats, but it's too much effort to keep both in sync so I live with the situation as is.
Comments
It's not possible in MuseScore, and it shouldn't be. It's been done before, but the cost of measure numbers not lining up is greater than the gain.
In particular, it's in getting actual human musicians to play the parts that you pay the price - that is why standard music notation and standard engraving practice does not allow for this. It is normally very important to have the same measure structure for all parts, or chaos tends to ensue in reharsals as musicians can't figure out which measures of their parts correspond to which measure in other people's parts. I can't tell you how much time I've lsot in rehearsals when playing from poorly hand-produced scores and parts where the copyist was not aware of this basic principle, and I'd ask people to start at measure 43 and I'd get three different things happening at once because each section of the band had a different measure 43.
If you really want to do this despite the strong reasons why standard notation/engraving practice disallows it, you can certainly do so by exporting the parts as separate scores.
In reply to In particular, it's in by Marc Sabatella
OK, good point. My main scenario was someone just trying to practice his part alone at home, but I agree it's impractical in a rehearsal with several musicians.
A feature like "expand selected / all repeats in score" would be really helpful. I could imagine this to be rather straight forward ... the midi generation essentially does it.
Thanks for your answers!
In reply to OK, good point. My main by drowo
If the proposed tool you are describing would expand the repeats in the score and also in the parts, I suppose that it might be useful, even though it would be little more than an automated copy/insert measures/paste sequence. But as Marc and Isaac have mentioned, it is very bad to have different measure layouts for scores and parts. They must all agree with each other.
The standard way to notate repeats is not that complicated. For short sections that repeat--4 bars or less, generally--just copy and paste in the repeated material at full length without using any repeat symbols. It's simpler all around for everyone.
For longer sections, use repeats with multiple voltas (endings), as required. It is quite common to have different instrumentation in the accompanying parts during a repeated section; this sort of thing is done all the time. Notate it as shown in the attached example.
Repeat_notation.mscz
As also mentioned, you could alternatively use staff or lines text to print a specific direction ('Second time only' or whatever) for specific parts of the repeats for certain instruments. However, if you do that, the direction will not be recognised by the program on playback. It would only be useful for human musicians. (That method is more commonly used in hand-copied music, for obvious reasons.)
In reply to If the proposed tool you are by Recorder485
Thanks for all the valuable information. The staff text method is not very practical for me as, although at some time humans will read the notes, my first orchestra is a bunch of VST Libraries. Thus everything has to be present in the midi output. I tried lot with volta's first, however ended up first adding / enlarging volta after volta, then removing the whole repeat (and voltas) in the end. In scores with >15 instruments the chance that there is at least one change in one instrument in each measure ist close to 100%.
So my workflow is typically starting with a simple piano track as guideline and latest when adding a string section removing all repeats. BTW, the feature I described to be helpful was of course meant to remove the repeat from score an parts together. No inconsistent measure layouts in score and parts ... the rehearsal scenario Marc described in his answer fully cured me from wishing to have that ;-) It would just be an automation of what I do manually now.
Thanks again for all you answers and help.
In reply to Thanks for all the valuable by drowo
If there are changes in each measure to at least one instrument, then indeed you can't use repeats at all. In your situation, I think the best approach would be to just write it all out at full length from the start. Much simpler than having to create repeats and then get rid of them later in the process, and generally easier for performers to read, too. Append/Insert measures, Copy+Paste, and away you go on your next section.... :O)
If you just want to say that one instrument/part should not play the first time, you can add staff-text saying "Tacet 1x" or "Play 2nd time" or similar.
In reply to If you just want to say that by AndreasKågedal
perfect! thank you