A matter of style: Alternate repeats labels

Dorico
1

Gould shows, but does not explicitly state

“1.2.”

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What is the consensus today, when we don’t have to consider the effort and time for hand engraving? Is it better with

“1., 2.” and “1., 3.”

or

“1.–2.” and “1.–3.”

if consecutive?

I guess the “.” comes from the German “th” meaning “first”, “second”, “third” etc. but would it be obsolete in an “English edition” and replaced with

“1, 2.” or “1–3.”

Looking forward to comments and thoughts on this in “modern notation”.

(The use of time signature font (Gould recommendation) is just peculiar for me, as one can add “ad lib” or any other text to the label (supported in Dorico), whose font would clash with the use of the time signature font. I use the default text font, in my case Times New Roman, and it blends well with other text.)

2

I write out up to 3x so use “1, 2, 3.” and then “1–4.” I also use my default text font as I often have text in the endings as well.

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3

+1

Let’s assume a section with alternative endings and which is also “DC:ed” with “sempre con ripetizione”, how would you write it?

1, 3

and

2, 4.

as it on the first “pass” is 1st and 2nd time and on the ‘DC’ it is the 3rd and 4th time it should be played.

4

Normally this would simply be 1. and 2.
The DC has no affect on the numbering.

5

Yeah, I might add a little reminder text like “Play both x’s on D.C.” but just 1 and 2 should be enough if I’m understanding how you have it structured.

6

But if one wants an “exception” on the DC, not following the “first pass method”, how should this be indicated? Would not the “labels” be a good use for “navigation” instead of texts like “On the DC do this and that”?

7

So the structure is like this?

dc
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I still might include text stating “Take 3rd ending on D.C.” or something for clarity.

8

Hello. I am Mats’ colleague. His musical structure is more like this:

a
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And we want to take both 1st and 2nd endings after D.C. even though in classical music’s tradition, we almost always skip the first ending after D.C.

9

In that case I would add ‘con ripetizione’, e. g. like this:

D. C. con ripetizione

or (short)

D. C. con rip.

10

I agree with Janus. I did see this kind of notation (in pop tunes), but usually it trips me up instead of helping – a simple “con rep.” is all that is needed.