D.S., D.S. al Coda

D.S., or Dal Segno, means “from the sign.” It directs the player to return to a spot earlier in the score that’s marked by the symbol. If the marking says D.S. al Coda, then the player is supposed to play from the to a “To Coda” marking, then jump to a coda section at the end of the music. See Coda.

You can easily place D.S. markings into your score if you’re preparing your score for printout and not for playback; see “To place a “D.S.” marking into the score,” below.

With some additional steps, you can even make your D.S. markings functional—that is, control the way Finale plays back your score.

When Finale reaches the D.S. marking during playback, it jumps back to the sign…

…and repeats the music up to the To Coda marking, whereupon it jumps to the coda.

To create a D.S. al Coda and define it for playback 

To place a marking into the score

1. Click the Repeat Tool  .
2. Double-click the measure in which you want the % sign to appear. The Repeat Selection dialog box appears. If you’ve loaded a Text Repeat Library—or if the Maestro Font Default file is in place—you should see the sign. If you don’t see the marking: click Create; the Repeat Designer dialog box appears. Type a % symbol (shift-5); click Set Font to change the type style to Maestro 24-point. Click OK to return to the Repeat Selection dialog box.
3. Double-click the sign. The Text Repeat Assignment dialog box appears. If you don’t need to make the % marking control playback, click OK without changing any settings; you return to the document, where the marking is in place. Also see “ Repeats –To move, hide, or delete a text repeat.”

If you want to define the marking for playback, continue: Note the Text Repeat ID of the marking. This indicator appears at the top left of the dialog box, in the form “Text Repeat ID: 9” (or whatever number Finale has assigned). You’ll need to remember this number for a moment.

4. Click Never Jump (Mark). You’ve just defined this text repeat to be a mark—in other words, a marker to which other text repeats (“D.S.,” in this example) will direct playback.
5. Click OK (or press enter). The sign appears in all staves. See “ Repeats –To move, hide, or delete a text repeat.” Click in the measure and drag the handle to reposition.

To place a “D.S.” marking into the score

If you’ve created a symbol, you must now place the corresponding D.S. marking. Again, this marking may be purely graphic, or it may be a functional text repeat that actually directs playback of your score to the measure containing the sign.

1. Click the Repeat Tool  . Double-click the last measure to be played before jumping to the . The Repeat Selection dialog box appears. If you don’t see the D.S. marking in the window: Click Create and type “D.S.” (or D.S. al Fine, or D. S. al Coda). Click OK. The D.S. marking now appears in the list of Text Repeats.
2. Double-click the D.S. marking. The Text Repeat Assignment dialog box appears. If you don’t need to make the marking control playback, press enter one more time; you return to the document, where the marking is in place. Also see To move, hide, or delete a text repeat.

If you want to define the D.S. marking for playback, continue:

3. Click Jump on Pass(es). Enter a number in the text box. This number designates on which repetition of the music the playback should jump to the sign. If this is a standard D.S., in which the music up to the D.S. marking is played once, type 1 into the Total Passes text box.
4. In the Target section, click the drop-down menu and choose Text repeat ID. Enter the Repeat number of the sign you created. This is the number you remembered when you placed the sign into the score (This is “9” by default). Because you’ve specified that the playback should jump to the itself (instead of specifying a measure number), you can change your mind about the location of the sign in the score. You can delete it and put it into another measure, and Finale will still direct the playback to it correctly.
5. Click OK (or press enter). You return to the document. See To move, hide, or delete a text repeat.