Goal
Understand repeats and how to follow them.
Repeats
We often want to repeat things in music and there is no shortage of ways to do it. Let's go through the many ways a song can repeat.
Here is a table of the repeat terms we should know:
 Repeat Previous Measure |
Repeat the previous measure. Can sometimes have numbers to indicated to repeat multiple previous measures. |
 Simple Repeat |
Repeat the measures enclosed. |
 Multiple Ending Repeat, Volta Brackets |
Repeat the measures enclosed. Take the first ending and repeat, then take the second ending and repeat, and so on until the last bracket is reached. |
 Da Capo |
Go back to the start of the piece. Do not take repeats already played unless noted. |
 Dal Segno |
Go back to the the sign and play from there. Do not take repeats already played unless noted. |
 Segno |
The sign. |
 Coda |
The coda. |
 To Coda |
Go to the coda. |
 Fine |
The End. |
 Da capo al coda |
Go back to the start, take the coda. Do not take repeats already played unless noted. |
 Da capo al fine |
Go back to the start, take the coda and play to the fine. Do not take repeats already played unless noted. |
 Dal segno al coda |
Go back to the sign, take the coda. Do not take repeats already played unless noted. |
 Dal segno al fine |
Go back to the sign, play to the fine. Do not take repeats already played unless noted. |
Simple Repeat
The first is a simple repeat. It is represented by two dots at the start or end of a measure, it means to play through the measures once, then when reading the ending dots to play through it again.
There is also the repeat sign:
This simply means to repeat the measure before it again.
First Ending, Second Ending, Multiple Endings
These work like the simple repeat, only the last measures will have a number with brackets above it. The fancy name for these brackets is the Volta. This means to play through the measures like a normal simple repeat, and upon reaching the repeat the first time, play the measures bracketed under the 1 and then repeat like normal, then on the second repeat when you reach the brackets you skip to the measures under the bracketed number 2 and repeat again and you keep doing this until you reach the last repeat after which you finally play the next measures.
DC (Da Capo)
Da Capo is italian meaning “from the head”, meaning to go back to the start of the piece. If you come across this term in the music then you go back to the start of the piece and play it again, only this time you do not take any repeats, meaning if there are simple repeats you just play them once, if there are multiple ending repeats just take the last ending.
Fine
Fine means “end” in Italian and signifies the end of a piece. Say for example you want to use a D.C., but you want it to end earlier than the repeat. For such a situation you can use D.C. al Fine, which means go back to the start but when you hit the Fine you are done.
Coda
A coda means “tail” in Italian, and in music the coda symbol means to jump to another section, historically the end. If you see a mark that says DC al coda it means to jump back to the head and take the coda. There will always be two parts, the “to coda” and the actual coda, one for the spot where you should jump from and another for the spot you will jump to. You do not repeat any repeats you have already played unless it is notated otherwise.
D.S. (Dal Segno)
Dal segno means “from the sign” and means to go to the sign and start playing from there. This is for the cases where you don’t want to go back to the start of the piece. D.S. can be used alone or in combination with D.S. al coda or D.S. al fine, just like D.C. can be.
Note: DC and DS are often at the end but do not need to be.
Practice
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