Why number a measure with "a" and "b"?

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wonder
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Post by wonder » Fri Feb 22, 2019 6:03 pm

I'm prepping some orchestrations. I'm fairly new to the world of musical theater.

Why, in this excerpt from Mary Poppins, do they label a measure with 93a, 93b, 100A, etc?

I'm seeing it happen on 2/4 bars mostly.

Why would one want to do this?
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zuill
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Post by zuill » Fri Feb 22, 2019 6:06 pm

I've seen situations where there were mistakes made originally in numbering, and this was used to rectify the mistakes in the least disruptive way.

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wonder
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Post by wonder » Fri Feb 22, 2019 6:11 pm

zuill wrote:I've seen situations where there were mistakes made originally in numbering, and this was used to rectify the mistakes in the least disruptive way.

Zuill
Ah. OK. That makes sense.

I was just given THE ADDAMS FAMILY parts to make synth patches to and noticed it on that score as well.

Was wondering if there's ANY world where an orchestrator would purposefully want to number a bar with "a" or "b".

In fact, one tune has measure 36, 36A, 36B, 36C. Maybe they added some measures after the orchestration was done?
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Michel R E
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Post by Michel R E » Fri Feb 22, 2019 6:32 pm

the times I've seen it have mostly been for added measures that were done in a later revision.
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