Repeat Mark Bar Lines

Repeat marks are used both to help cut down how many pages a score takes up and to show repetition within parts. There are a few methods of notating repetition that we will cover over multiple lessons. Practical examples with be given for each method to help you understand exactly what they mean.

The most common method of showing repetition is with repeat mark bar lines, they look like this:

Repeat Marks

These always come in a pair. At the start of the bar above is the 'start repeat', notice that the two dots are to the right of the double lines. At the end of the bar is the 'end repeat', with the dots to the left of the double bar. With this form of notation you will play through the bar as normal but when you see the end repeat mark you jump back to the start repeat mark and play it all again. Unless you are told otherwise you will just repeat this once (so you will play the bar twice).

This is much simpler than it sounds. Basically this:

Playing Repeat Marks

Would be played as this:

Playing Repeat Marks

Repeat marks can cover any amount of bars. It is quite common to see whole pages repeated.

I said above that you play what's in the repeat marks twice unless told otherwise. When it is intended for you to repeat the section more than once you will see the note 'play x times', where 'x' tells you how many times you play what's inside the repeat marks. In a normal repeat mark a 'play 2 times' mark is implied, but this doesn't need to be shown as that's what the marks are already telling you. The most common is 'play 3 times'. Below is an example of this.

This is the section with repeat notation:

Playing Repeat Marks

Which would be played as this:

Playing Repeat Marks

You may have noticed that six bars of music is an odd amount and are wondering why this version is most common. In this case a two bar phrase is repeated 3 times and either the previous or following two bars will have something different in them, meaning we can't use repeat notation for them. As you work through sheet music this will start to make a lot more sense.

TASK:
  1. Work out the following patterns that use repeat marks:

Exercise 1

A repeat marks test.

Exercise 2

A repeat marks test.

Lessons

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