If think the Broadway books are bad (and I've played them), wait till you see brass band music published by the Salvation Army. I don't know if they're trying to save paper or what, but one part will have two baqrs and a six-bar 1st ending, another will have four bars and a 4-bar ending, another will have 8 bars and just a repeat sign (both endings identical), and the score has no repeats at all!
On top of that, they'll put a rehearsal letter or maybe two INSIDE the first ending. Every player needs a guidebook to find the way through the part. AND in my band, we have to enlarge all the parts because they're printed almost microscopically. Notes look like flyspecks. There's no convention that I know of, but oh, how I wish! Horace Brock On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:15:03 -0500, you wrote: >On 10 Dec 2008 at 11:27, John Howell wrote: > >> I've actually run into that very thing in Broadway >> books, specifically in "The King & I." I was asked to make a cut at >> a certain point in a certain number, discovered that some parts had >> repeated bars (and LONG endings!) while others did not, and it >> probably took us at least 15-20 minutes to solve that stupid problem. >> It probably saved the copyist something like 10 minutes work, and has >> been plaguing musical directors and wasting time in the pit ever >> since! > >And yet, in the 18th and early 19th century, this was incredibly >common in both MSS music and in printed editions. For both, it may >not have been a matter of saving copying/engraving time, but of >saving paper, which was relatively more expensive than paying the >copyist/engraver. > >Of course, it's also the case that a lot of old sources that were >clearly used have uncorrected errors in them (wrong notes, even >missing measures), so it's unclear to me how they managed to use >them. > >I'm certainly not arguing for the practice, just pointing out that >there was once a time when the balance of rehearsal time vs. savings >came out, apparently, differently. > >> This does, however, bring up the question (again! it's been discussed >> before) of how to handle bar numbers in multiple endings. Number the >> first ending bars but not the second? Use duplicate numbers in the >> 2nd ending? Just number straight through, giving each ending it's >> own numbers? My feeling (and my practice) has always been that every >> bar should have its own unique number to avoid confusion in >> rehearsal, regardless of repeat marks, and I have NEVER thought of >> bar numbers as "outlining the form of the piece." Is there actually >> a standard? > >I don't know if there's a standard. I have always questioned the >authority of even our respected books on notation, since however much >they try, they can't deal with every situation. But I think the way >you describe it is the very simplest way to do it. It's also the >easiest to implement in Finale! _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
