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Hi guys, i am a bit confused here as to what part of music i am supposed to repeat when there is a repeat symbol at the end off a bar.

You show 2 || which is an end - whilst :|| is a repeat back to the start of that particular part.

I don't see a repeat symbol at the end of of that, or on any of those bars. I see a double bar-line, which indicates the end of the piece, or the end of a section.

Notation practices with different types of music style and notation styles vary. One common "repeat this section" notation is the double vertical dots beside a bar-line or double bar-line, at the start and end of the section to be repeated. Sometimes it's put in text, with brackets or dashes showing which bars to repeat. Sometimes they mark it with a highlighter pen and write, "Hey Steve, on Thursday, repeat this section at the end because Andy's going to be showing off his new snare at the gig near the hospital and and wants to wind up the song with 30 seconds of fancy brush work because chicks dig it and that place is full of nurses."

RoberTunes wrote:I don't see a repeat symbol at the end of of that, or on any of those bars. I see a double bar-line, which indicates the end of the piece, or the end of a section.

Notation practices with different types of music style and notation styles vary. One common "repeat this section" notation is the double vertical dots beside a bar-line or double bar-line, at the start and end of the section to be repeated. Sometimes it's put in text, with brackets or dashes showing which bars to repeat. Sometimes they mark it with a highlighter pen and write, "Hey Steve, on Thursday, repeat this section at the end because Andy's going to be showing off his new snare at the gig near the hospital and and wants to wind up the song with 30 seconds of fancy brush work because chicks dig it and that place is full of nurses."

Well, i'm not going to forget the difference now am I.

Thanks guys, still learning the basics off reading music

Play 1 2 3 4
Play 1 2 3 4
Play 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Play 1 2 3 4 3 4

Peter Duggan wrote:

Code: Select all

1   |2   |3   |4   |

Play 1 2 3 4

Code: Select all

1   |2   |3   |4   ||

Play 1 2 3 4

Code: Select all

1   |2   |3   |4   :||

Play 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Code: Select all

1   |2   ||:3   |4   :||

Play 1 2 3 4 3 4

Thank you Peter

Then it gets more complicated with "1st time" and "2nd time" endings.

I will mention that I made my living for a time as a studio musician, and I don't think I ever saw anything written with repeats.

Instead they write everything out in full.

I think it's to remove a potential cause of screw-ups; repeats would mean having all the musicians jumping around on the page when they're sightreading full speed during the recording.

Highland pipe music, on the other hand, loves repeats, 1st time/2nd time etc especially in piobaireachd. A studio musician would be puzzled by the way tunes are written in the Kilberry book!

Theoretically a repeated section has a ||: at the beginning and a :|| at the end. The repeat sign at the beginning can be omitted if it is the absolute beginning of the piece. And you may have first and second endings.

Irish and Scottish traditional music generally consists of a succession of sections that are either repeated or not. So sometimes the start repeat symbol ||: is omitted because "everyone knows" that when you get to the end of a section you will be told whether to repeat it or not by the appearance or absence of a :||. You can get away with this because of the predictability of the structure. Usually all the sections are the same length (except for set dances), but sometimes the repeats are written out because of some variation.

I have also seen French traditional music written with repeats, first and second endings, but as well as that "everyone knows" that you have to play the whole section twice over, which is nowhere indicated in the notation. If one section appears to be half as long as the others, that is a sign to be suspicious. Usually.

In some classical music, it is the custom to play the piece twice over, the second time round omitting the repeats. Maybe this is more a matter of personal preference.

Many many jazz tunes have the structure AABA, where generally A and B are eight bars long. Frequently people get careless about the notation, and you might see
||: A :|| B ||
because "everyone knows" that you're supposed to go back and play another A section after the B. Except some tunes don't do that.

What pancelticpiper says is instructive. Studio musicians do not have time to deal with "Stuff everyone is supposed to know". There are different models for making music. One is--play the notes correctly while wasting as little studio time as possible. Another is--adopt the piece as your own, work on it lovingly for weeks or months, developing it to its full potential as best you can. Another is--you specialize in a particular genre and you learn all the ins and outs of that particular genre. The role that notation plays in these different models will vary.

I noticed some people playing some classical Bach tunes very similar to an Irish tune -- often there is an A part and B part and both get one repeat. But some play it just once.

Then there's tunes like The Gravel Path/Walk where I hear people repeat only the fourth part.

fintano wrote:In some classical music, it is the custom to play the piece twice over, the second time round omitting the repeats. Maybe this is more a matter of personal preference.

Where you get forms like minuet & trio in baroque and earlier classical music, current performance practice typically differs from that of the day when composers would have expected:

Minuet = A A B B
Trio = X X Y Y
Minuet = A A B B

Where modern players (except in HIP fields) usually play:

Minuet = A A B B
Trio = X X Y Y
Minuet = A B

Because it's once composers like Mozart and Beethoven start to write (then omit) instructions like 'da capo senza repetizione' that the more recent convention starts to get established and then retrospectively applied.

But we are digressing somewhat from the original question here!

Sedi wrote:I noticed some people playing some classical Bach tunes very similar to an Irish tune -- often there is an A part and B part and both get one repeat. But some play it just once.

Again, Bach would have expected his repeats to be played.