I have a piece that has two identical eight bar ‘A’ parts and one 16 bar ‘B’ part. The whole piece needs to be played three times. I have created repeat structures that should do this correctly, however, the second and third time through the second ‘A’ part is not played (this is the nested (internal) repeat of the whole 3x repeat of the entire piece).
I have tried using DC, DS, and simple repeats. I have “Play repeats” and “Play repeats after D.S./D.C. jump” checked in Playback Options.
What am I missing?!
(My project is attached to this post).
Thanks for any help you can give.
Follow the heron home.dorico (1.7 MB)
Just drag and drop the file into the editor window,
1 Like
Follow the heron home - alt.dorico (1.7 MB)
Not sure exactly what you wanted (am in a hurry). If you only wanted the third stanza to be sung without the repeat (you had lyrics for the repeat) and stop before the refrain, the altered file should serve. If you meant to sing the song and refrain three times through, you should remove the repeat and set a third ending at the ending (in which case you could use regular repeats in place of the Dal Segnos.
Thanks for your reply, Derrek. Let me clarify: I want ALL of the stanzas (the ‘A’ part) to be sung with a single repeat; each stanza has two lines of lyrics. The chorus is the ‘B’ part, and is only sung once after the two (repeated) ‘A’ parts. This whole thing is repeated three times (A,A,B, A,A,B, A,A,B) for the song, but what I’m getting is A, A, B, A, B, A, B.
I hope that’s a bit clearer. Thanks again.
Here is my version:
Follow the Heron.dorico (816.5 KB)
Edit: Added the chord symbols.
1 Like
WOW… That works, but I’m not sure why. The only repeat is in the ‘A’ part. There is no repeat at the end, and no D.S. or D.C. markers, so what is controlling the number of times the entire piece is repeated?!
Also, I did not know that you can create multiple endings on incomplete bars. That’s cool, but might be a bit confusing to young players. Is it simply a matter of stretching the ending markers to the correct beat in the measure? (Is this a common practice)?
If you view the hidden signposts, you will see that there are two D.C. markers on the third beat of the last measure, and the last note has the Ends voice property activated to hide the final quarter rest. This is what makes the whole thing play three times.
If you select the first ending bracket in engrave mode, you will see that No. times played is set to 5, Times played for segment is set to 1,3,5 and Custom text is set to 1. Similarly, the second ending has Custom text set to 2. These settings are what makes it possible to achieve the AABAABAAB structure you wanted.
3 Likes
Thank you John. This will take some studying, I’m brand new to Dorico, and just got Dorico 6. This will give me a real boost in understanding the best way to use this tool. I really appreciate your assistance. (Just before I received your last message, I noticed that signposts were turned off – when I turned them on, they all appeared. It will take me a little while to digest all of this magic). BTW, one last question: does Dorico automatically add a “system break” on each line of the score, or is this something you did explicitly).
Thank you again!!!
I added the system breaks to spread the music over five systems instead of four, and to start the chorus at the beginning of the third system.
1 Like
Here is my version for young players, which writes out the A section twice and does away with the repeat endings:
Follow the Heron Simplified.dorico (827.6 KB)
It can’t get much easier for young players to follow than this.
1 Like
Once again, very instructional. Thank you, John. I had actually considered doing the same thing, but I was trying to keep its footprint small in order to get more than one piece on a page. Also, I was trying to understand the best way to achieve the repeat structure I needed using Dorico’s many playback options.
On that note, though I truly appreciate your insight and assistance, I am still left wondering why my original attempt didn’t work correctly. Is it my misunderstanding of the feature set, or is it a bug in Dorico 6.0.20?
As best as I can tell from my limited experience with this program, there was no reason why the nested repeat of the “A” part only was honored in the first time through. Is there no way to make a nested repeat structure repeat each time its enclosing repeat structure repeats?
Thanks again.
Your original attempt wants to return to the same start repeat barline after both the A and B sections, but in order for nested repeats to work, the inner repeat must start after the outer repeat starts and end before the outer repeat ends. After the B section in your original attempt, Dorico returns to the pickup before the start repeat barline even though the lyrics for verses 2 and 3 start just before the last end repeat barline.
If a repeat occurs inside another repeat or after a D.S./D.C. jump with the option to play repeats after such a jump activated, then Dorico will play the enclosed repeat correctly after the first pass if it is a simple repeat but not if it has repeat endings. This is a known problem which will hopefully be fixed in a future version of Dorico. The workaround is to alter the settings for the repeat endings as I showed in post #7.
1 Like
Hi @steinberg_fiddleman, besides the excellent advices by @johnkprice (with explanations about the issues and lovely young people versions), revisiting your original project, I allow me to show a workflow to have the desired playback with your original version (even if I also find a little hard to follow as a player, but John gave nice solutions for this):
- in Write mode, select the repeat brackets in bar 8-11 and set the No. times played to 6 in the Properties panel
- in Engrave mode select the first repeat bracket and set its Times played for segment to 1,3,5 (this will put the second repeat segment automatically to 2,4,6). Set a custom text if desired.
- to avoid the repeated upbeat, select the last eight note in bar 27 and activate Suppress playback for it
Dorico file example:
Follow the heron home-REPEATS CORRECTION.dorico (1.7 MB)
Video with workflow:
1 Like
Ignoring the chorus, the version with the A section written once has two systems with six lines of lyrics under each system, while the version with the A section written twice has three systems with three lines of lyrics under each system. The difference in the amount of vertical space needed by these versions is very small. Therefore, I recommend using the simplified version for all players and completely avoid the use of repeat barlines.
1 Like
Hello Christian, thank you for the video and the explanation – it was extremely helpful.
This is exactly what I was looking for! Not because it is a better way to do this, but because I like to understand the capabilities and limitations of my tools so that I can make an informed decision as to the best way to accomplish the goal.
As a matter of good practices for a clearer score, I believe that John is correct regarding a simpler approach which eliminates the problem of the nested repeat completely, and spreads the repeated eight bar “A” section into a single, unrepeated 16 bar “A” section similar to the “B” section.
That being said, it also appears that my solution “should have worked”. I would consider that the requirement that the inner repeat must be fully enclosed within the outer repeat (meaning that they can neither start nor end on the same beat), is a bug in Dorico (apparently both version 5 and 6). This is a clear case of a what we call in software engineering as a “boundary condition” bug.
Considering the many ways this “bug” can be worked around, it is probably a low-priority bug to fix, but it is still a bug. And in my opinion, the work-arounds are not obvious, especially to the someone like me who is both a software engineer as well as a beginning Dorico user.
Thanks to both you and John for your sage advice. This has been a puzzle for me, and you both have solved it beautifully.
Best regards,
-mark (fiddleman)
1 Like
Hello John,
I concur. But please also read my response to Christian.
Your solution obviously creates a much simpler score for reading, and with both of your help, I now understand the playing field. I am curious to know if Steinberg will also consider this a bug or if they believe it to be a feature.
Regardless, thanks to you. both, I have now learned a whole lot more about Dorico’s write and engrave modes, repeat structures, and signposts.
I am grateful to both of you for stepping up and giving me a leg up.
Best regards,
-mark (fiddleman)
2 Likes