The Complete Idiot''s Guide to Music Theory

84 Par t 2:Rhythms

When you’re playing a long piece of music, various parts of the song might be

indicated by numbers or by letters. For example, you might see the letter A at

the beginning of the first verse, and the letter B at the beginning of the second

verse, and the letter C at the start of the chorus. This way other musicians can

tell you to start at a specific point in the song by saying, “Start at letter B.”

Alternatively, the measures of a song might be numbered. If this is the case,

you can say “Start at measure 16”; everyone will know what you mean.

In any case, you need some way to determine just where you are in a piece of

music; otherwise you’ll always have to start at the beginning—even if all you

need to practice is the very end!

Repeating Sections

There are various shorthand methods you can use when writing or arranging a

piece of music. Especially useful are various ways to indicate repeating sections,

which saves you the trouble of writing out the exact same music two (or more)

times.

When you have a section of music that should be repeated, you border that

section by a pair of repeat marks.One repeat mark indicates the start of the sec-

tion to be repeated; the other one indicates the end of that section. Unless

noted otherwise, you repeat a section only once (that is, you play it twice), and

then you move on to the next section.

A long piece of

music (especially in the

orchestral environment) is

often called a score.More

precisely, the score is the

piece of music the conduc-

tor uses, which contains all

the parts for all the instru-

ments and voices. The music

for each individual instru-

ment is not technically a

score, although sometimes

people refer to it as such.

Definition

Learn more about the vari-

ous sections of a song in

Chapter 11.

Note

Use repeat marks to indicate a range of measures to play twice.

Sometimes you’ll need to repeat a section but play a slightly different ending

the second time through. When you see this in the score—called a first ending

and a second ending—you play the first ending the first time through, and then

when you repeat the section you skip the first ending and play the second ending.

Use first and second endings to end a repeated section two different ways.

You also can repeat a section of a song by returning to a section designated with

a sign (called a Segno sign). For example, when you see the notation “D.S. al

Fine,” you jump back to the Segno sign and play through to the end of the

song.