I have an AB AC AB AD section that I wrote originally like this:
However, looking at it, and considering someone I gave the score to played it incorrectly as ABABCD, perhaps this scoring is overly complex? Is it better to express it as the following:
This kind of makes the horizontal space more packed, but is the flow way less complicated overall to read as a performer?
-
1This might be opinion based but it might be not. AFAIK, repeats are mainly things favored by publishers, more often than musicians. It allows publishers to print more music using less ink and paper, so their costs are lower but they can charge the same. For musicians, some like repeats when they reduce page turns and my experience is they hate a repeat when it makes them have to turn back a page or more. Personally, especially with complicated volta such as you have, I never want repeats. If having these complicated repeats fits the whole piece on one or two pages, maybe that's ok.– Todd WilcoxCommented Aug 15 at 14:27
-
General rule-of-thumb response to the title alone: Yes please! when sight reading, one of the hardest things is to jump from one point in the music to another. The main reason to use repeats, DCs, etc is to save paper, minimize page turns, etc (and sometimes to make formal structures more visible, like a da capo aria). But there’s rarely harm in writing out small repeated chunks.– Andy BonnerCommented Aug 15 at 15:19
-
1I'm generally fond of repeats (to an extent: a repeat that goes on for the whole two bars before it branches into voltas is really excessive in my book), since they tell me that yes, it's really the exact same thing, no surprising little differences to look out for, but the point about hating to turn pages is spot on. What, oh what ever happened to sheet music on loose pages that one could lay all out before starting to play? Or books with long pages that unfolded to the same effect? What?– DiviznaCommented Aug 15 at 15:29
-
@Divizna The best arguments I know against loose pages are they can more easily fall off the stand and also get out of order and you can lose one without knowing it. Unfolding music is only liked by percussionists who often can’t easily turn pages. Everyone else likes a nicely done page turn more than clever origami tricks. Unfolding also only gets you so many pages. You can’t unfold a whole musical theatre book and you definitely don’t want to have only some pages unfold. So page turns have become the least bad option that works in all situations. Except percussion.– Todd WilcoxCommented Aug 15 at 19:23
Add a comment
|
2 Answers
Your first version is notated correctly, but since the repeated passage is very short, I'd propose as simplest to read a third option:
|: A B A (1.) C :| (2.) D
Crude picture edit:
This is what I'd prefer.
-
-
Rags like "The Entertainer" do the rough equivalent of expand every repeat of the OP's example within each strain. (Admittedly, strain structures are more like ABACABD.) Commented Aug 16 at 5:35
This could end up opinionated, but personally, even though slightly more crowded, the second is easier to interpret when reading in the heat of the moment. There could have been DS, DC, coda and $, but I think that would just muddy things up even more.
