The Complete Idiot''s Guide to Music Theory

Part 2:
Rhythms
84
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.

---

Chapter 7:
Tempo, Dynamics, and Navigation
Another navigation technique uses a separate section of music called the 
Coda
.
When you insert a 
Coda sign
in your music, that indicates that you should
jump to the section marked Coda. A common navigation technique is notated
“D.C. al Coda” or “D.C. al Fine,” where you jump to the beginning of the
song and then follow through to the Coda or the end (Fine). The following
table details these and other common Italian navigation markings.
Italian Navigation Markings