Codas, D.S. al Codas

• Mar 7, 2019 - 15:05

Hi All,

It seems I do not understand how to implement Codas and D.S. al Codas.... etc.

Is there a sequence that must be followed to make a D.S. al Coda to work correctly. Example: As I enter notes and come to a place where I need to enter a repeat (D.S. al Coda) I insert the Segno when I come to it and then enter more notes and then enter the D.S. al Coda when I come to the measure where it needs to be placed. Usually when I do this it does not work... it just skips over the D.S. al Coda. Sometimes, but not all the time if I delete the Segno and D.S. al Coda then re-enter it... it will work. What is going on here? Do errors in setting up Codas affect it working correctly? Is there a difference between Segno and segno labels? (caps vs no cap)

Also Codas.... in V2 of Musescore you could place the Coda on the right or left of the measure in inspector.
In V3 it places the Coda on the left side of the selected measure. The only way to move it is to drag it.... is this OK or is there another way to move it. I'm not sure I understand Coda placement. I assume I place the Coda in the last measure that is played before jumping... and place the Coda on the right side of the measure. Is this correct?

What is the difference between the label "coda" and "codab". Should I use these with multiple CODAs?

Sorry for the long post.

Comments

• Mar 7, 2019 - 15:37

You must always enter a DS al Coda in this order

Segno
To Coda
D.S. al Coda
Coda

The labels in the inspector tell where the jumps will go, so you have freedom to change the text in a jump. This allows you to use coda and codab for multiple jumps within a movement. You can't overlap them or next them though. This means you could not put a second segno between the to coda and D.S. al coda so a later D.S. al coda can jump into it. Also, section breaks are considered walls to all jumps and repeats. They mark the end/beginning of movements (or songs), so each movement can have its own DC if you want.

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• Mar 7, 2019 - 17:28

To be clear, you can enter the D.S. al coda first and then the other items in any order you want to as long as they appear in the score in the correct order. If any of these is missing or have the wrong label in the inspector, MuseScore will ignore all of them.

The version 2 book does talk about this, it just doesn't tell what someone familiar with music should already know. For example. it doesn't emphasize the importance of the order of the items that I know from being a musician.

This is typical of the instructions. There are few examples in the manual, because there is an expectation that the user is either familiar with the music they want to write or will learn about composition from another source. If you downloaded the PDF you can see the manual is already quite large and adding more examples would quickly make it much larger.

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• Mar 7, 2019 - 18:06

Thanks for the clarification. I am not a musician, I'm a retired engineer. This is a hobby for me. I played organ as a teenager and wanted to get back into it when I retired. My spouse is a musician and music teacher, however, she knows little about music software. I've been playing piano for two years.

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• Jul 16, 2020 - 23:37

I have Segno, To Coda, D.S. al Coda, Coda, Segno (In same measure as Coda), Fine, D.S. al Fine. However, when I get to D.S. al Fine it jumps to the first Segno instead of the second segno and then takes the To Coda and then ends at Fine, instead of going to the second Segno and then ending at Fine. Am I doing something wrong? I found a way to get it to play the music I want, but it didn't seem correct musically.

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• Jul 17, 2020 - 00:32

The second segno (and D.S.) are inside of the Coda. Therefore, you wouldn't come to either until you completed the first D.S. al Coda sequence. Since you are within the bounds of the Coda and the second D.S. is inside the Coda it would be logical to take the second segno which is inside the Coda. Musescore, however, is going back to the first segno and then weirdly taking the To Coda where there is no instruction to go to a Coda in the second D.S. which is D.S. al Fine.

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• Jul 17, 2020 - 05:15

Bonjour !
The segno of measure 17 is not differentiated from the segno of measure 1. The D.S. al Fine therefore directs the return to this first segno. When you use several segno you must index them in the inspector: segno, segno1, segno2, ( or segnoa, segnob), etc... and, of course, specify it in the properties of the D.S concerned in the inspector.

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• Jul 17, 2020 - 10:02

The good news is that this does play back correctly once https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/6248 is merged; so it'll work out of the box in MuseScore 3.5.1+

The better news is that you can indeed already get it to play back correctly right now, by removing the ambiguity MuseScore has about those segnos:

  1. Select on of them (I chose the one from m17)
  2. In the Inspector (F8) change the "label" field for it
  3. Select the related Jump instruction (in this case, the D.S. al Fine at the end of the score)
  4. In the Inspector change the "Jump To" value to match the label name you gave in step 2

Result attached

Attachment Size
285532_SATB D.mscz 38.31 KB

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• Jul 17, 2020 - 10:27

You may also want to change the symbols for the second Segno and use the "Segno variation" marker from the pallet. This would be helpful for the singers to spot where to go next. In fact if you use the Segno variation marker it already has a different label ("varsegno") from the plain Segno. You just have to edit the label in the relevant DS then. In the attached example I have used the segno variation and have also edited the text of the D.S. makers to include the relevant segno signs (available from the special character pallet [f2]) or the alpha button when in text edit mode.)

Attachment Size
20200717_SATB D.mscz 38.6 KB

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