Thanks to the recent improvement of the sound quality of playback in music notation software, it is now becoming possible to create a good quality mockup in music notation software without having to take the trouble of exporting it as MIDI file and finishing it in a DAW.
Then you may be concerned about the settings of repeat signs such as 1st/2nd endings, segno and coda during playback.
Finale has a function called “Check Repeats” to visually check this.
Dorico does not have a corresponding function, but there is a setting item called “Bar numbering for repeated sections” in “Engraving options > Measure number > Repeat”, and by selecting “Count repeats” here, the measure number of the repeat will be added in parentheses to the score.
However, if you use this function to number the bars of a repeated section, you will have to count all the bar numbers while tracing the order of performance, so if the song uses a lot of repeat symbols, it may become complicated and take time to check them, as three or more bar numbers may be displayed for one measure.
For example, let's say you have a song like this.
The song's structure is roughly as follows:
A - B (Vocal)
→D.S. al Coda 1
A (Pf. Solo 32 bars) - B (Vocal)
→To Coda 1
D (Vocal)
→D.S.S. al Coda 2
B - C (Vocal)
→To Coda 2
E (Vocal)
If you want to check this order by listening to the playback, you will first play back just before “D.S. al Coda 1” on page 4, but in that case, you will have to go back to page 1, Dalsegno, and listen to the A - B section again to make sure “To Coda 1” works properly.
Even if you increase Dorico's playback tempo to the maximum BPM=500, it will still take a certain amount of time, and if you find a problem and have trouble fixing it, you will have to repeat this process many times, which can be very time-consuming.
One solution would be to create a new test project that reproduces only this playback order on one page and check the playback order there.
If you can reproduce the playback order as you want in this test project, you can set the repeat symbols with the exact same settings in the original project.
In the case of this example given here, if you set BPM=500, it only takes 29 seconds to listen to the whole thing. It is relatively easy to check the bar numbers of the repeated sections displayed by checking “Count Repeats”, so you can repeat trial and error as much as you like.
Creating several test projects like this will help you learn the settings, and if you forget them, you can easily remember them by looking at them.
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Note that you need to be careful about which beats in the bar the repeat symbols are assigned to.
For example, if “To Coda 1” in this example is shifted to the previous bar, the jump will not work properly. When “Count Repeats” is checked, the measure numbers of the repeated sections will not be displayed correctly, for example, consecutive bar numbers are shown on a bar, which is very convenient as it allows you to see at a glance if an error has occurred.
(I learned about the error caused by the misalignment of “To Coda 1” when I got stuck during testing and was able to solve the problem with the help of a member of the Steinberg forum. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the members of the forum for their help.)