<p>Just curious how much everyone else is paying for prep and recording their college audition pieces. I was quoted $50 an hour plus studio time (which isn't expensive at $14 an hour). It's still going to be $250 or so before we are done with it, I'm sure.</p>
<p>Here is thread from last year with some information on alternative services available:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/1281483-mp3-accompaniment.html?highlight=track[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/1281483-mp3-accompaniment.html?highlight=track</a></p>
<p>accompanist – I bring this up because so many students misspell this word. I’m not sure why it would take so long to get someone to play through a few 16-32 bar cuts. And you really don’t need studio quality. It’s up to you how good it needs to be. We are listening to you, not to the accompanist. You can get rather good quality outside of a studio.</p>
<p>We haven’t had to do this for college auditions yet, but d does the process now for other auditions. She just uses her voice teacher as the accompanist, a $79 Tascam DR-08 Portable Digital Recorder which she had to buy for school (they all hold them up during rehearsals to record accompaniment in order to practice at home), and a few minutes out of her voice lesson.</p>
<p>She burns CD’s by uploading the mp3 files to her PC and/or downloads the mp3 to her iPod. </p>
<p>If necessary, she edits the files on her PC with Audacity, which is free and very slick.</p>
<p>She tried using her iPhone as the recorder, but the Tascam is much better (nice stereo mics).</p>
<p>If you decide to go with a pianist, the dollar numbers per hour seem reasonable, at least in my big city. We didn’t need many hours, however; I think it took about 1.5 hours and that’s because the daughter is difficult to please. (I’m guessing your “studio” cost is not referring to a professional recording studio, but the pianist’s space?) All my d’s prescreens made it through.</p>
<p>Not all schools require a live pianist for a prescreen video, as Kjgc says above, but working with a pianist is good practice for your live auditions. Our pianist also helped make sure the cuts were smooth and that the music was well marked for the audition pianists.</p>
<p>I’m a lousy speller :). I’m sure my kiddo would cringe…</p>
<p>Studio time is at a professional studio with recording equipment. In for a penny, in for a pound!</p>
<p>I thought that you were talking about recorded accompaniment for live auditions. If you are talking about shooting video for prescreens, and if you can get this done by pros for $14 an hour in a studio, then you can’t beat that. We just shoot those in our school’s black box theatre with a decent HD home video recorder and use recorded piano tracks (see post #4) for easy sound balancing.</p>
<p>It’s for both live auditions and we will use it for our prescreens. I have a friend with a professional HD camera. No grainy stuff here :)</p>