Auditions: How to Prepare 

Nailing That Tryout

There are a couple of key moments in the year during which we receive an influx of new student requests for help with audition prep. These usually take place over winter break for high school seniors who are fine tuning their skills for a scholarship or college music program auditions, or in the spring for students who are trying to get into the top band at their school. 

In case we hadn’t mentioned it until now…we love helping students prepare for auditions! 

If You Care, Then Prepare!

WARNING! Nailing an audition takes PREPARATION! Last-minute prep is going to add to your panic, leave you more nervous, and shake your confidence in your true abilities resulting in an audition that will likely go south pretty quickly.

Remember, auditions will take place in high school and beyond. That’s why all the practice you do from the time you first start playing a musical instrument is going to prepare you for those auditions that will happen later.

When we encounter a student who has limited time to prep before their audition, we take it on as an opportunity to demonstrate the benefit of one-on-one private lessons. 

Yes, we are going to provide the student with feedback and advice to help elevate their audition piece. But a small handful of private lessons before an audition aren’t going to necessarily make or break the outcome this time around. 

That’s why we’re going to instead focus on the student who starts lessons months ahead of the audition or who is a current student. In both of these situations, we have solid lead time to prepare for the tryout.

In these cases, we can not only help the student select an appropriate audition piece that showcases their strengths, but also strategically work with the student to prepare for other audition elements like scales or sight reading.

Types of Auditions

Elementary and Middle School Auditions

Most auditions are going to be directed at high school students, although there are All-District and All-State opportunities for even first-year band or orchestra students depending on where you live. Typically, these kinds of groups provide the students with audition materials. These usually consist of one or two songs/excerpts, a few scales, and sightreading. 

Middle School and High School Audition Opportunities

These auditions could be for the top group in your school, pit orchestra, jazz bands, chair placement, or just for a solo part within a large group arrangement. 

Honors Groups & Introductions to College Music Programs

An extension of honors groups are ones that are held by colleges. These kinds of honors groups are also an introduction to the college’s music program and teaching staff in hopes of attracting potential music students. The auditions will be similar but usually they will request that students have a song or etude (a short musical composition for one instrument designed to demonstrate the musician’s skills) of their own in addition to other required elements like an excerpt, scales, or sight reading. 

College and Scholarship Auditions

These consist of one or two contrasting pieces. At this stage students are expected to have more proficiency. Lists of recommended repertoires may be provided by the institution for your song selection(s). Straying from the list isn’t a problem as long as whatever piece(s) are selected showcase both lyrical and technical elements. These are the kinds of lessons for which working with a private instructor before you start is the most beneficial. Other elements like scales or sight reading are common. 

The college audition process usually includes several auditions prior to starting college:

• Audition to get into the School of Music
• Audition for Music Scholarships for both music majors and non-music majors
• Fall auditions for ensemble placement and chair placement

This encompasses an entire year of prep with deadlines for recordings, college visits for live auditions, and then auditions those first few days on campus as a freshman student. Every college does it a little bit differently, so researching the process and learning what each college wants is an important first step.

Audition Elements

The most common components of auditions are solo(s), scales, and sightreading. 

Solos

Whether the solos are selected by the student or provided by the organization as etudes or excerpts, the goal is to play them as accurately as they are written including notes, tempo markings, dynamics, and articulations. Auditioners are also looking at tone quality, pitch accuracy, and style. 

Scales

Scales are the most technical aspect of any audition. You may be told beforehand, or you may be surprised at the audition. What Major or Minor scales are selected for auditions depends on the key of the instrument and the age/level of the performer. If you are a 1st year student, you likely aren’t going to need to know all 12 major scales, their relative minors, and all three forms of minor scales for the audition. But if you are advanced, you will want to make sure you have solid chops on all your scales. Universally, knowing a full range chromatic scale for your instrument’s full range is pretty standard.

In private lessons we have various tools to assist with scale practicing to help with tricky key signatures and with speed. It’s probably the most boring thing we teach, but the closest thing to a shortcut there is to learn how to play your musical instrument with advanced technical proficiency. 

Sight Reading

Sight Reading is a skill that is more challenging to learn but when undertaken, it is very valuable and satisfying. The only way to improve your sight reading is to constantly play new things. When we prep a student for a sight-reading audition, we have some special materials that we use in the lesson. 

Other Audition Elements

There are a couple of special things to address if you are auditioning for Jazz Bands.

Improvisation

Improvisation is a unique skill that takes practice. Having a teacher guide you through steps such as different scales and how to approach building a solo will help take the mystery out of ad libbing. And while all audition prep is confidence building, the feedback on improvisation learning is more so. It’s the difference between shakily winging it and making deliberate note choices. 

Transcription

Bringing in a transcription to a jazz audition is when the auditioner is asking the candidate to show that they can learn a well-known jazz musician’s solo by ear. It’s an extension of improvisational knowledge. The best way we become better soloists is through transcribing.

Get Psyched for These Tricks

This is probably our favorite part of audition prep. Depending on the level or stakes of the audition, the audition facilitators or college faculty might have some of their own tricks to employ. 

How to Deal with Being Cut Off

The biggest thing that can shake a student’s confidence is being stopped in the middle of their piece. We want to warn you about this upfront.

Students need to know that being cut off doesn’t mean they did anything wrong. Generally, the auditioner just got what they needed. Audition days are usually tightly scheduled, and time is very limited. That’s why we cannot stress enough to not take this personally. We may even do this to a student during a lesson as practice for handling it in the audition.

How to Deal with Intentional Distractions

Other kinds of tactics an auditioner might use are faculty talking during an audition, dropping their pencil, standing up, walking behind you to look over your shoulder, or asking you to play a section over again. This may lead you to stress that you’ve made a mistake.

Typically, these kinds of distractions are intentional. Of course, they always feel disarming and even rude. But the important thing to remember is learning to ignore unwanted audience behavior and just focus on performing at your best. 

You Got This!

Remember, the more you practice the greater your confidence and the better prepared you will be for your audition.

If you have an important audition coming up, we’re here to help. We encourage you to reach out to us to learn more about private lessons and audition preparation.

You got this!