Re: How to skip to chorus from stanza and return to next stanz?

[Aaron Hill]

On 2019-07-16 7:52 pm, John Helly wrote:
> Aloha.
>
> I have a guitar and vocal song with 6 stanzas and a chorus and outro
> with lyrics.  I would like to jump to the chorus after the 2nd and 4th
> stanzas and return to the 3rd and 5th, respectively, coming out of the
> chorus.  Since I'm not formally trained in notation, I don' t know how
> this should be approached (or if it's possible).  Here is the structure
> of the song.  Any advice is most welcome.  I've tried inserting markup
> text but haven't been successful although this would be my ad hoc 
> approach.

Ad hoc is not a bad thing, to be honest, providing your notation is 
clear enough for performers to follow consistently.

There are a few approaches I have seen for this pattern.

1) Join paired stanzas together as a sort of meta stanza.  If you have 
room on the page, simply have stanza one flow right into stanza two.  
This does mean duplicating notes and chords, but it only needs a simple 
repeat and produces a very clean roadmap.  The added advantage here is 
that you can cut the number of lyrics lines in half.  (Six is pushing it 
my experience, and you will likely need to space the lyric lines or add 
in dividing lines to make it easier for the eye to know where to jump at 
the end of each line.)

2) Keep all lyrics stacked and use a repeat with two voltas.  The first 
volta will be a repeat back to the top of the stanzas for iterations 
"1.3.5.".  The second volta (for "2.4.6.") will lead into the chorus.  
At the end of the chorus, use a D.C. or D.S. as appropriate, with or 
without an "al Coda" again as needed.

3) Notate the music as if the chorus follows each stanza and either add 
a text markup or rely on folks hand-writing in text that informs them of 
the roadmap.  This option is very handy if the roadmap could change 
between performances.  For instance, you might end up only singing 
stanzas 1, 2, 4, and 6, with the chorus after 2 and 6.  Sometimes, it is 
nice to have printed notation that is more general and flexible than to 
be cluttered with potentially extra specificity.


-- Aaron Hill