Repeat signs
Six ways of saying in which order the bars are played — each shown twice: as printed and written out, both of them playable.
Repeat signs save paper. They change not a single note, only the order in which the written bars are played: three printed bars become five played ones, four become eight. That is exactly why they are so often misread — you see less than you play.
So every case on this page appears twice: once as it is printed, and once written out. In the written-out picture each bar keeps the number it has in the printed one. Read the row of numbers underneath and you see the path; press the button and you hear it.
Every bar has its own pitch and lasts a whole note. That is not music but a signpost: only that way can you hear which bar is playing.
Repeat sign
Two dots before the barline say: back to the beginning and once more. If the opening sign is missing, you go back to the start of the piece. The second time round the dots are ignored and you carry straight on — otherwise you would never reach the end.
The path: 1 2 1 2 3
Two sections in a row
When a closing and an opening pair of dots meet at the same barline, one repeated section ends and the next begins. That is the usual shape of a minuet or a dance movement: two sections, each played twice on its own.
The path: 1 2 1 2 3 4 3 4
First and second ending
The brackets over the last bars say what is played the first time and what the second. The first time round the bracket marked one applies, followed by the jump back; the second time it is skipped and you carry on in the bracket marked two.
The path: 1 2 3 1 2 4
Da capo (D.C.)
At the end stands Da Capo al Fine: start again from the top and stop at the word Fine. Fine sits in the middle of the piece, not at the close — it is ignored on the first pass and is the ending on the second.
The path: 1 2 3 1 2
Dal segno (D.S.)
Dal Segno al Fine sends you not to the beginning but to the sign somewhere inside the piece. From there you play once more until Fine is reached. That saves the opening when it is meant to happen only once.
The path: 1 2 3 4 2 3
Coda
Dal Segno al Coda jumps back to the sign and, the second time To Coda is reached, out into the coda — the ending of its own. Whatever stands between To Coda and the coda is skipped on that second pass. That gives a piece an ending that happens only once.
The path: 1 2 3 2 4
How to read a jump sign
All jump signs follow the same rule: keep playing until a word says otherwise, jump once to wherever the word points, and carry straight on from there. A sign is obeyed only ONCE — the next time you pass it, it is already spent. Forget that and you are stuck in the loop.
The words appear in Italian in every edition in the world, like forte and piano: da capo means from the beginning, dal segno from the sign, fine end, al fine to the end. They are never translated, because they belong to the notation and not to the prose.
The jump to the coda is read twice: on the first pass To Coda is just a note in the margin and is ignored. After the jump back it becomes the exit point — from there you carry on at the coda sign. Everything in between is skipped the second time round; that is precisely what a coda is for.
Two signs that do not belong here
Two signs are often thrown in with the jump signs although they do something else. Bar repeat stands for a bar that sounds exactly like the one before it — it saves writing within the line, but it sends nobody back. And Upbeat is not a repeat sign at all but the incomplete bar at the start; with a repeat, the upbeat and the closing bar often add up to one full bar.
Music symbols · Articulation · Ornaments · Music notation glossary
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