I know that with sheet music the symbol :II at the end of a part means it should be repeated, but can somebody please tell me what it means when the symbol appears at both the beginning & end of a part e.g. The sheet music on this site for Miss Mc Cleods’ Reel ? (Of course usually when it appears at the start, the symbol is reversed so it appears as II: …………………:II )
It’s where you go back to and start your repeat from
Makes sense , that is if there is an intro note you want to exclude in the repeat but most ,if not all , the examples I have seen don’t have an intro note to exclude , which means there’s no real need to include the symbol at the start, would that be correct to say ?…. or am I missing something , (Apart from a good knowledge of sheet music !!!)
Again, it’s down to the fact that the conventions for reading/writing music were not developed for diddley, they were developed for the complexities of classical music, so there is bound to be redundancy. (It’s also useless for the complexities of diddley)
Thanks for the reply Michael.
I’ve got a bit of sheet music. Signed at the end by Al Capone, when he was a detective sergeant.
I’ll get me coat . . .
Most of the people I know leave out the repeat-from symble even when there’s an intro note.
PP
’sright Pied. Once you’ve played it through it’s obvious where the “start” is.
If you want to get your ABC’s to play accurately on MIDI playback (not that anyone really wants that!) then you sometimes have to be rather pedantic about how you notate in ABC format to make sure it follows what you want it to do in terms of the repeats. Some programs require that start repeat symbol if I am not much mistaken.
This used to puzzle me, too, when I was a learning to read dots. The way “The Theory and practice of Music” puts it is something like this: (I’m at work, & the book is at home) “A double bar and two dots (archaically four dots) are used at both ends of a section of music to indicate that it is to be repeated. If the section of music is the beginning of a piece, the initial double bar and two dots are omitted.”
A similar source of confusion was the convention that initial rests are not indicated in the first bar (well, it makes sense, but when you’re learning, these things do confuse you).
Just repeat everything inside the repeat signs. If there only one repeat sign, just go back to the beginning.
(Next week’s lesson- First and Second Endings)
Essential Elements for Strings, pg.20🙂
I was taught that a double bar and four dots means you repeat it twice.
I was also taught that you should put rests in the initial bar.
The “anacrusis” complicates things even more - if you have notes before the initial bar line, you have to shorten the final bar (either of that part or the final bar of the tune).
As we are talking about repeats, for the benefit of beginners, notation can be shortened by having a first time and second time bar.
|:blah blah|blah…….|1tee hee:|2ho ho ho|]
where you would play up to the first time bar, repeat from the start up to the first time barline, then skip to the second time bar(notice the square bracket to give you a bold double bar to mark the end of this section).
My PET HATE in ABC is an anacrusis after a repeat bar.
|:EF|G2GA etc. does not make sense, but is found all over the internet.
This should be EF|:G2GA etc.
Two fiddles for ABC anoraks only, do not try these in a session.
TOP FIDDLE
It is non standard ABC, but if you use exclaimation marks to force new lines and have problems getting repeats or double bars to display correctly, try a “space asterisk space” to force it. The following will sometimes be confused by the repeats, so use an asterisk.
1vvv www:|2xxx yyy|]!
* [|aaa bbb
SECOND FIDDLE
My particular version has problems with C major tunes - it leaves a blank line at the top. Try putting a grace note in first.
{f}|:gGG GAG|
Aha! My version of ABC Navigator doesn’t need “!” to force a newline - a carriage return will do it. But various ABC files I’ve piked up are full of exclamation marks, which made me wonder why. Thanks for clearing that up, Geoff!