D.C.

Da Capo, or D.C., means “to the head.” It directs the player to return to the beginning of the score. “D.C. al Coda” and “D.C. al fine” instruct the player to then play to the To Coda marking or to the end of the piece, respectively.

If you follow all of these steps, you’ll create a functional text repeat that directs the playback of your score to the beginning of the piece. If the D.C. marking doesn’t need to affect playback, follow only the first four steps.

To place a D.C. marking in the score

  1. Choose the Repeat tool , and double-click the last measure to be played before returning to the beginning of the piece. The Repeat Selection dialog box appears. If the D.C. marking already appears in the window, skip the next two steps.
  2. Click Create and type D.C. (or “D.C. al Coda,” or “D.C. al fine”). Set the type style by clicking Set Font.
  3. Click OK (or press ENTER). The marking now appears in the list of Text Repeats.
  4. Double-click the D.C. marking. The Text Repeat Assignment dialog box appears. If you don’t need your D.C. marking to be functional for playback, simply click OK (or press ENTER) to return to the document, where the D.C. marking appears.
  5. Click Jump on Pass(es) and enter a number in the Text Field. The number in the Jump On Passes text box designates on which repetition of this music the playback should jump to the beginning of the piece. That’s the number you enter into the Total Passes text box. If the playback should return to the first measure after playing the music only once (the usual situation), enter 1.
  6. Choose Target > Measure # (if it isn’t selected already). Then enter the measure number to which you want the playback to jump (usually measure 1).

    Check Allow individual edits per staff to allow the text repeat to be moved independently between staves. Under Show On, assign the text repeat to all, or certain staves.

  7. Click OK (or press ENTER). You return to the document, where the D.C. marking appears in every staff. (To hide the marking in a certain staff, choose the Staff tool and double-click on the desired staff’s handle. In the Staff Attributes dialog box that appears, uncheck Endings and Text Repeats. Or, use the “Show On” options.)

To move or delete the D.C. marking

  • To move the marking, drag its handle.
  • To remove it, click the handle and then press DELETE.

To create a functional To Coda marking and sign

See Coda.

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