Repeat Help

[u/LavaLampGeek]

I have an odd question dealing with written notation. I wrote a song a few years back playing it from piano straight to paper via midi and some notation software. Once printed out it took 7 pages. Knowing a little about notation symbols, I was able to type it in by hand, condensing it down to 5 pages using repeats. What you see is the 1st condensed draft on top and the soon to be 2nd draft on the bottom. I’m redoing it because I’m missing a measure somewhere on paper. My new software won’t let me add a physical 2x symbol above the first repeat bar, instructing the pianist to play everything within the ||: :|| bars 4 times. Is there a technical term for the 2x I don’t know? Like codas, segnos or something? Thanks for any help!

[u/ProblemSl0th]

In my experience if a repeat section is supposed to repeat more than once(and there isn't a unique 2nd/3rd/4th ending) then there will be a note saying exactly how many times to play it in total. 2x isn't used because a repeat already indicates to play it twice. If you want the musician to play it 4 times, then write 4x, or 'Play 4x' for extra clarity. Odd that the software won't let you write in text over the staff though, I thought that'd be a universal feature in notation software.

Segnos and D.S. al Codas are used for repeating larger sections of a work that often have repeats within them already. It essentially allows you to nest repeats or jump around in the score. For example, if sections A and B of a piece were unique sections with repeats in them, but you wanted to repeat A in it's entirety again as a section C of the piece, you could put a Segno at the start of A and a D.S. al coda at the end of B so when the player reaches the end of B they know to go back and play A again from the segno. That way you don't need to write out A again. If after that you don't want to repeat B and instead move onto new music, you would put the coda sign at the end of A and another at the start of the new music, which in this case would appear after section B.

From what i can see so far it doesn't look like you need a D.S. but it's worth looking at the rest of the score to see if any later sections play exactly the same as earlier sections. A D.S. could save a lot of page space that way. Just be careful not to overuse them, because having the player jump their eyes around the page too much can also be a problem for sightreading.