# Rehearsal mark

Source: https://arcosounds.com/glossary/rehearsal-mark
Also known as: rehearsal letter, rehearsal number

**A rehearsal mark is a boxed letter or number placed at structural points in a score and in every part, so a conductor can restart the whole ensemble at the same place.**

Marks are placed where the music changes, a new section, a key change, a tempo change, rather than at regular intervals, which means they double as a map of the piece’s structure. Older editions use letters; many twentieth-century publishers use the bar number itself, boxed.

In rehearsal, "four after B" means four bars past the mark, and counting quickly from the nearest mark is a genuine orchestral skill. Marking your part with bar numbers before the first rehearsal saves everyone time.

They are one of the small mechanisms that makes an ensemble of fifty people workable, and they are invisible to anyone who has only played solo repertoire.

Canonical source: https://arcosounds.com/glossary/rehearsal-mark