Eccentricities, typos and more! Feel free to add anything I missed.
Vocal Scoring Quirks
Throughout the musical score, singers are referred to by their initials or first names (with occasional changes).
CT - Chip Tolentino
LC - Leaf Coneybear (Except when he is labelled CB)
LS - Logainne Schwarzandgrubenierre, aka Schwarzy (Except when she is labelled Sch)
MP - Marcy Park
OO - Olive Ostrovsky
WB - William Barfee
RP - Rona Lisa Peretti (Except when she is labelled RL)
MM - Mitch Mahoney
Everything is written in the treble clef, so you will need to transpose Chip Tolentino, Leaf Coneybear, Mitch Mahoney and William Barfee consistently down the octave. Exception - William Barfee often has (8va) written next to his part - presumably meaning 'sing in written octave' when present. There are casts that can perform it exactly as written - other times you may need to adjust octaves for who you are working with.
Note: Several of the songs use the vocal part designations 'Boys' and 'Girls' - plan your pronouns with care when working with non-binary casts.
General Notes By Song
#1 The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Leaf C's entrance in m.93 was a bit tricky with the asymmetry caused by m. 92a. I (and Leaf) found it easier to cut m. 92a, and change the last 2 beats of m. 92 (a la OBC recording) to indicate the vamp is moving on.
#2 My Friend the Dictionary
M. 97-end: remember Olive is written an octave above where she sounds.
#6 Pandemonium Reprise
Piano/Vocal score doesn't have voice designations for m. 21-24
#7 Prayer of the Comfort Counselor
Neither scores have song vocal assignments for m. 29-36
Libretto/Vocal score is missing m. 38-39 E minor Oohs
Oohs and Aahs harmonies have no vocal indications to the end of song
#9 My Unfortunate Erection
This song has alternative lyrics available: My Unfortunate Distraction.
#11 Spelling Montage
Spoken cues in the PV score/Vocal score differ from the actual libretto.
Libretto version cues (pg 49):
"Please spell indicant" = m. 1
"Please spell vulpine" = m. 3
"Hallux" = m. 5
... after that its a judgement call (we used "Palaver" at m. 7), tempo quickly increasing in gibberish until Olive steps up to the mic - then sudden slow motion.
Correlating the music and dialogue in m. 11-25 is somewhat tricky, definitely practice dialogue with the music during blocking.
#11B Coneybear Goodbye (instrumental underscoring)
The synth piano score is waaaay easier to read from than the PC score.
#12 I Speak Six Languages
TMD and PMD research revealed the following information (sorry I can't credit the specific people who provided the info, feel free to credit in the comments)
Foreign language sections are almost a literal translation of the first verse:
Je peux parler six langues (French): “I (can) speak six languages”
Cada idioma es simple (Spanish): “Every (each) language (is) easy”
Jerro o yo no reshipe no yasashi desu (Japanese): “(It’s) easy as the recipe for (making) Jello”
Ya gavaryu shest yaziki (Russian): “I speak six languages”
V'ani yodat shalom (Hebrew): “And I (can) say hello”
Im Noch mindestens sieben mehr (German): “In at least seven more”
*Note that the PV and vocal scores have a misspelling ("seiben" instead of "sieben") - it's spelled correctly in the script, though.
#13 - Jesus
Have the cast sing their most operatic random note in any range until cut off.
#13a Three Spellers Remain!
Play approximately 2 measures before cut off by phone ringing (they provide 14 measures of underscoring for some reason).
The cutoff in m.22 is not specified anywhere other than [Sudden stop on cue]: your director's choice.
#16 and 17B - Second Part I and Part II
Teach these early, they're hard.
#20 Finale
No vocal assignments m. 34-end
#21 Bows
No vocal assignments in final goodbyes m. 32 - it just says 'all'. I think they just didn't care by this point in the show.
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