Use of volta to play line of previous part as ending of a repeat
I have tried using Volta lines for repeats and can get them to work as long as 1st time Volta measures are played and 2nd time measures follow after the 1st time measures on the score sheet.
Question how do I get it to work to skip back to play a line from a previous part as the 2nd time repeat.
Text example of tune .................
1- first line of first part of tune
2 - second line of first part of tune
3 - first line of second part of tune
4 - second line of second part of tune
What I want is the first part repeated twice, line 1, 2, 1, 2
Then the second part is repeated twice, but
on second repeat of second part, I want to play the first line of second part
and then end tune playing the second line of the first part.... Line 3, 4, 3, 2.
and if not at tune end then continue on and play the third part without playing second part over again.
Comments
Not possible in MuseScore
Not quite readable for your end users either, but you can get this kind of condensing when using the shortest possible fake measures to accommodate for the repeating.
This is by any standard and interpretation considered abuse of the volta notation and of whomever has to interpret your score. I strongly suggest you do not use this notation
In reply to Not quite readable for your… by jeetee
I have been using musescore for a long time now but only for simple music and it is very good.
I don't use alot of the lines and addons as shown in the pallette so maybe I am making the wrong use of the volta lines. Your example in the reply above seems to play as I want it but the numbers are confusing for a simple reader like me. What do the numbers mean? Are the measure numbers to be played in order of the list?. They are entered both in the Text at begin line and also in repeat list.??? Also I see you get repeats at second bar and the barline is not a repeat barline with 2 dots.??
This format of music score is very popular in Scottish and Irish music where the music is supposed to sound in phrases, generally repeating each part and playing a line from a previous part as an ending on the 2nd repeat of a later part. It is normally described on the line as... 1 of 2 and 2 of 2 .....OR 1st time 2nd Part and 2nd time 2nd Part. ....... and the 2nd time 2nd part would actually be the last line of the 1st part.
What else should I be using in musescore to achieve this sequence.
Thanks for your help
In reply to I have been using musescore… by muselt
The numbers you see, (from the begin Text property of the line) is just text. You can change those to whatever you like. I wrote them to match the values from the repeatlist, so it can be more cleary to you to help understand what's going on.
There are two forces at play here.
First is the repeat count of the final measure (the one having the repeat barline) which was adjusted from the default of 2 to 5. This works as any other repeat barline; meaning it repeats back to the start of the score, given that there are no start repeat barlines found.
So by adjusting that repeat/play count, the full score is now played back 5 times.
The second element are the voltas. Historically they are used as alternative endings, where each volta except the last would have it's own end repeat bar. They are occasionally "abused" to skip measures within a repeat and function as some kind of coda (usually only when the coda is just a single measure and would otherwise be far away).
The repeatlist of such a volta controls on which playthrough of the repeated measures the contents beneath it is honored or skipped.
So in the example score we start playback as such:
first time playing
process the end repeat bar: 1 < 5 --> perform a repeat; we're now starting 2nd playthrough
process the end repeat bar: 2 < 5 --> perform a repeat; we're now starting 3rd playthrough
process the end repeat bar: 3 < 5 --> perform a repeat; we're now starting 4th playthrough
process the end repeat bar: 4 < 5 --> perform a repeat; we're now starting 5th playthrough
process the end repeat bar: 5 >= 5 --> no repeats left; continue at next measure
end of score
Resulting playback: 1,2,3,6, 1,2,3,6, 1,4,5,6, 1,4,6, 1,3,6
As far as notation goes: you can simply mark these voltas to be invisible and attach whichever explanatory text you seem fit instead.
In reply to The numbers you see, (from… by jeetee
Thanks for reply......." Never in a month of Sundays" would I have been able to figure that out.
So although your example has only 4 measures of music it needs 2 tiny measures to make it work due to bugs.
And all 6 measures are read and figured out whether to skip or play on each passthrough. So if a piece had 120 measures for example......then all 120 measures (depending on where the repeats are) would need to be read on each playthrough if say the ending of the tune was to replay the last 4 measures of the first part.
Your example shows all 4 measures controlled with voltas. When repeating a range of measures from an earlier part as an alternative ending to a part the measures of all the other parts in between would not have voltas....How is that controlled and made to skip?
You mention...." play as it is under a volta with a repeatlist entry matching 2nd playthrough or 3 playthrough etc". What defines a playthrough?...... 1-2 and 1-2, 5 .....does that mean play measure 1 and then 2 and because 1-2 is not in the other voltas skip them until repeat barline which is in a tiny bar with no voltas, so go back to startfor repeat......is that one playthrough complete?
Is it just coincidence here that 1-2 looks like meaning measures but in fact means playthroughs?
So does it mean play measures 1 and 6 on all repeats, play voltas having 1-2 on 1st and 2nd repeat then play voltas having volta 3,4 and 3, then volta 4, then volta 1-2, 5 again.
This means everything needs to be in sequence and no other music in between?.
In my situation I can get the simple voltas to work by copying the line I want repeated from an earlier part down to the line following the part i want the alternative ending on..... and the simple prima volta and seconda voltas work.
In reply to Thanks for reply......."… by muselt
So although your example has only 4 measures of music it needs 2 tiny measures to make it work due to bugs.
Not quite; the 1st tiny measure is there to work around a bug. The final tiny measure is there to make the repeat not be part of a volta, as otherwise it would get "hidden" by it at times the volta doesn't play. And we need the repeat to be taken every time.
[…]then all 120 measures (depending on where the repeats are) would need to be read on each playthrough[…]
Yes
When repeating a range of measures from an earlier part as an alternative ending to a part the measures of all the other parts in between would not have voltas....How is that controlled and made to skip?
Make sure all of those measures are covered by the same volta. Either by making the volta "open" (remove the end hook), or by applying the volta over all of them. See also https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/voltas for how to correctly apply a volta to your score.
What defines a playthrough?
The n-th time a score has started from a given position (start repeat bar or start of score or start of section), not counting times triggered by jump instructions. So everytime an end repeat bar sends you back to a start repeat position, the playthrough count for that reference point is increased by 1.
Is it just coincidence here that 1-2 looks like meaning measures but in fact means playthroughs?
Yes. Measure numbers come nowhere into play here.
As mentioned in the previous post, the visible text is just text, change it to whatever you like.
The only things influencing playback in that example are the end repeat barline and the repeatlist of a volta. Nothing else.
In reply to The numbers you see, (from… by jeetee
Deleted this as it seems to be double posted copy of earlier post.....????
In reply to Thanks for reply......."… by muselt
Thanks for all your explanations...... I have a better understanding of Voltas now.
I think it is too much "fiddling" for what I want to do. It is just simpler to copy down the ending from an earlier part and use standard Voltas...... but other music software can do it easily..??
In reply to Thanks for all your… by muselt
I'm not familiar enough with other notation packages to be aware of any tricks they might have to facilitate this. You might get more success using a sequencer package, where you can assign each snippet a name and refer to it that way; but you'd be leaving conventional music notation at that point.
I doubt other notation packages would handle this any better. As stated in the very beginning:
This is by any standard and interpretation considered abuse of the volta notation
It's also why I suggested adding normal textual explanation as you've seen it before (such as the 1 of 1, 1 of 2, 2 of 1 you've alluded to before) and making the voltas invisible.
In reply to I'm not familiar enough with… by jeetee
attached is example of bagpipe tune to show what I mean. In the bagpipe software you just simply put in the brackets and tell it to play this line on the repeats of 2nd part. the 2 of 2 is ignored when playing the 1st part.
If there was a 3rd part, then after playing the 2 of 2 for the 2nd part it would skip the 2nd and go to the 3rd part.
It is used as aform of notation shorthand to avoid re-writing lines that are already somewhere on the sheetmusic.
The problem with musescore is, I think, it doesn't have a way of repeating back past the start of the repeat that it is in, to go to an earlier part outside this current range of measures and then return to follow on after the current repeat.
In reply to attached is example of… by muselt
See attached.
The top half of the attachment is the score using the volta technique from before. The repeat barlines in the middle are non-functional graphical symbols from the master palette; they don't influence playback, but are there to reproduce your example.
The bottom half is how I'd expect to notate such a playback order using classical notation. There is a bug in MuseScore that makes it so that the Fine after the jump was taken isn't recognized. I'm working on a fix for that, so a future version will play that back as intended.
[EDIT] I'd also like to point out again that it's not as much a "failure" of MuseScore than it is of standard music notation conventions that you can't just jump around continuously in a score and repeat sections without additional textual instructions.
In reply to See attached. The top half… by jeetee
Thanks for reply, I just see it now.... In the meantime I was trying other ways to do it and attached is a way that plays correctly and also show the 1st and 2nd lines of the repeats to let the reader know what to do. I thinks it only works because the jump back line is end of tune......if there were more parts would need a way to jump back down again to continue
In reply to Thanks for reply, I just see… by muselt
jeetee, When I try your musescore of Hector the Hero, you have added bagpipe embelishments. Playing on my computer that makes the tune unrecognisable. I am on a fast I5 windows10 using the latest musescoue update..????
In reply to jeetee, When I try your… by muselt
Attached is another version of Hector. It looks and plays the way I want it using DS al Coda etc for the jumps and the Volta lines to show to the reader what lines to play on each repeat and then continue down to bottom to next part........ I am not a musicman so is this a recognised method of doing it, because it is fairly simple to implement.
Something else I have noticed........when I save the files to my PC I and getting files with a comma before and after the files name. I hadn't noticed this before except some time ago after doing an upgrade. It now seems to be happening as I am working with the files, I get a proper copy and also a copy with the commas in the filenames...????
In reply to Attached is another version… by muselt
Comma delineated files are backups. See:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/file-formats#msczcomma
In reply to Attached is another version… by muselt
...is this a recognised method of doing it...?
I am not a piper, but your posted image "HectorH.jpg" would seem to suggest this notation as a way to save valuable space on the page, especially when in a marching situation -- and the added written instructions certainly help to clarify.
(Note what looks like 2 punched holes at the top of your image - to easily flip the page while marching.)
In reply to jeetee, When I try your… by muselt
I put the embellishments only there because they were present in the screenshot example you shared. I don't know how your tune is supposed to sound, so I can't comment on that.
In reply to I put the embellishments… by jeetee
Yes, I have learned alot about voltas and repeats and jumps....thanks for all your help.
I am messing about now.....attached is another copy with 2 coda parts...labelled in inspector coda and coda2, segno and segno2 etc etc. and the piece play as I expected. .....very simple to add.
Regards the embellishments, they seem to play far too slow in musescore...the play like individual notes. Embellishments are groups of gracenotes played very fast short and borrow time from the note following so as to keep the playback on the beat. The first gracenote of an embellishment before a main note should happen at the same instant as would be if the note was just plain. So I dont know why you dont know what the tune sounds like......play my version on musescore, that will give you the rythmn and with gracenotes it should sound same rythmn but enhanced by embellishments. Regards having a smaller tune on paper, yes that is true but in the days of handwriting music it saved re-writing bars that were already written.....us bagpipers learn the tune off by heart and play in from memory when marching.
Regards the backup files......do the continually accumulate or does musescore clear out old ones from time to time.......
In reply to Yes, I have learned alot… by muselt
Regards the embellishments, they seem to play far too slow in musescore...
See the discussion here:
https://musescore.org/en/node/277609#comment-858565
Regards the backup files......do the continually accumulate or does musescore clear out old ones from time to time...
If you are no longer working on a score, and have backup(s) saved on different drive(s) or another safe place, you can delete them. Normally they are hidden by the OS (operating system) so you wouldn't see them. Over time, though, they do accumulate.
In reply to Regards the embellishments,… by Jm6stringer
do they continually accumulate or does musescore clear out old ones
If you open the same score repeatedly, there is only one backup for it in that folder so in this sense they do not accumulate. If you open 100 different existing scores and save them, you will have 100 backups (one for each).
In reply to Regards the embellishments,… by Jm6stringer
Yes, I had seen the discussion on embellishments. I dont use musescore for bagpipe music because of that.
there are lots of other software specific for bagpipe that writes and plays it very realistically.
grace notes need to be probably 10ms to 20 ms max because they are grouped as embellishments and when that is played as individual notes it is far too long, longer than the main notes. Also I dont know how they are played in software but if it is controlled like midi notes and messages then no good as each will have an envelope, attack, decay sustain and release.
regards the backup files, yes I had hidden files ticked so that is how I see them now...OK.
In reply to Yes, I had seen the… by muselt
Regards the bagpipe gracenotes and embellishments as it is off topic here I will start a new topic thread on problems with bagpipe embellishments