Musical Repeats

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Bob from Forest Hills, New York.

Hi, Bob. Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What can we help you with today, Bob?

Okay. Sometimes I think people just forget about the original meaning of words.

I’m an amateur musician. I’ve played in my share of pit orchestras for shows.

And the other day, a friend of mine who’s a retired music teacher

And also played in his share of pit orchestras called me and said he was playing for a show.

And they had a vamp, some music underneath some stage business.

And the conductor said, repeat those two bars four times.

And my friend said, so do you want us to play eight bars or ten bars?

And the conductor said, eight bars.

And to me and to my friend, if you repeat something four times, that means you play it five times.

Okay.

Okay, Bob, what do you play, by the way?

I play the clarinet.

Okay.

And what was he playing, your friend?

I think in this case he was playing piano, but he’s a violinist as well.

Okay, very good.

And by vamp you mean that they play just a little light music as things change, right?

Yeah, you just keep repeating a couple of bars until the stage business gets out of the way.

Right.

So you have a disagreement, and this is something that you really have to get right.

I mean, can the first time you play something be a repeat?

Aha! We are at the heart of the question.

Hey, Bob, you know what?

I put this question to a wonderful musician that Grant and I both know, Greg Pliska.

Oh, our quiz guy.

Yeah, he’s one of our quiz guys, and he does a lot of conducting.

He’s working on a Broadway show right now.

And he does it for commercials and movies and documentaries.

Yeah.

Okay.

So he’s a pro.

Yeah, and he gave me a very simple rule for this.

It’s just five words, but it always works.

I’m all in favor of simplicity.

Okay.

The conductor is always right.

That may be true, but that doesn’t answer the English.

No, it doesn’t.

Come on.

Well, here’s the thing.

In linguistics terms, and this is something I can talk about.

I know jack about music.

This is a question of pragmatics.

How is it intended and how is it understood?

There’s an entire field of linguistics.

People spend their whole careers studying pragmatics.

They write books about this.

I feel sorry for them.

No, it’s actually incredibly interesting

Because it is generally neglected when people talk about music outside of that discipline.

Pragmatics is what is intended and what is received.

And in this case, we have a disconnect there.

But generally, I would say that the pragmatics of this situation

Probably could have been resolved when you first started to learn music.

I mean, this can’t have been the first time you encountered this.

Probably not.

But when you’re reading the music, and they’ll put over like, in a shorthand at times,

They might just write the number five over a bar that’s telling you to play it five times.

And they have dots or something. There’s like a repeat symbol.

There’s also a repeat symbol, which tells you to go back and play it once again.

Right.

But can we at least agree that in standard English, repeat means you’ve got to at least have done it twice?

I think we can agree about that in standard English, but Grant was talking about pragmatics and all that.

I want to talk about the thesaurus.

There’s a way around this.

Never use the word repeat.

Use the word play.

No, seriously.

To me, there’s got to be a difference between playing it five times and repeating it five times.

But this is an incredibly common English word.

It’s like dropping and.

No, repeat.

I mean, this call is a perfect example of the confusion we’re having.

And seriously, I know musicians who say don’t use the word repeat at all.

Always use the word play.

I mean, can you go over to someone who’s been standing mute in front of you for an hour and say, would you repeat that?

What was it, Philip Glass?

Bob, you have a point there.

I guess we’re not going to settle this to everybody.

But you win the call.

Let me just point out that you win.

You win at radio.

That’s nice.

We rolled over.

We’re saying uncle.

All right.

Well, here’s the point.

Just to sum this all up, Martha’s got a great point.

Your conductor probably should have worded it differently, right?

Yeah.

And I want to know what he finally said.

Did he say eight or ten?

Conductor said it meant eight.

Okay.

Wow.

Very good.

Well, I love this whole idea.

Just avoid repeat if there’s going to be any kind of confusion.

If this was an army, right, and I want you to take that base,

And every hour on the hour I want you to fire the cannons,

I want you to repeat that 10 times.

I mean, there’s some confusion there.

And I want you to do it next Tuesday.

What Tuesday is it?

Yeah, you’ve got to be clear.

If you were giving orders to a bunch of people, they better be clear.

So I think the fault here lies not with English but with the conductor.

The buck stops there.

That’s right.

Use the word play, not repeat.

Fair enough.

Bob, this has been a blast.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, dude.

Okay, thank you.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us and let us know what you think about repeat.

Does it include the first time that you do something?

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Or put it all in email to words@waywordradio.org.