Anxious about prescreens

I know that there is a wealth of information on this board. I’d really like those of you with experience and knowledge to help us if you can.

We are getting conflicting advice about prescreens. Some people say that the prescreen recording has to be perfect, not one mistake, otherwise there is no way that you will get invited to audition. Others say that as long as you can show that you are at the right level, even with some mistakes, that is enough. This is for undergraduate, not graduate, and I can see that it could be different depending on that.

But how perfect does the recording have to be?

For all of the places with prescreens, we have met and played for the respective teachers and have had a great deal of encouragement following the lesson. But some people have told us that the teachers don’t actually listen to the prescreens, so if it is a graduate student who does not know us, how much should we take the teachers’ comments into account? (For example, one teacher wrote in an email after the lesson, see you in February, which is when the auditions are.)

Thank you to anyone who can give any advice at all.

One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give (and it includes things you read here on CC) is not to give too much weight to what you hear from people. The idea of a prescreen is to see if someone is at the level that they think has a chance to be admitted, a school like Juilliard on violin probably gets hundreds and hundreds of applicants, many of them who quite frankly don’t have a chance, and the pre screen is designed to screen that type of applicant out, it is not meant to be “let’s knock out everyone but the next big thing”. As far as I know (and take that fwiw), the prescreens are decided by faculty working with the admissions department, while it is possible that a graduate assistant might be involved in the screening, that person is likely a teaching assistant and it isn’t the same as a TA in an academic school, in a studio they usually only have maybe 1 teaching asssitant and often they are people already with MM or even a doctorate (the teaching assistant in my son’s teacher’s studio recently got into the BSO), so if they are looking you can bet they know what the teacher is looking for. ). Others hopefully will weight in with their knowledge and experience, but I wouldn’t worry about that.

In terms of the pre screen, it doesn’t need to be a professional production done with recording studio quality, that much I can tell you, a lot of kids do prescreens with home audio and video equipment and do just fine. Likewise, the playing needs to be as good as you can get it, but it doesn’t need to be perfect. If you have sloppy intonation (talking violin here, i don’t know your instrument ) or on a wind instrument your tone control is all over the place, that would hurt you, but a slip or two likely won’t hurt you, if something shows basic problems with technique it will hurt you, a problem with some difficult bowing may not. The pre screen is to weed out that kind of player, one who cannot show consistent basic technique, that are below the level of the program, if you played for teachers at the school and they were encouraging, I suspect you don’t have anything to worry about:).

The whole process is nerve wracking, because so much of it is subjective, clouded in myth, and subject to all kinds of ‘experts’ weighing forth on the ‘truth’ (cause who can show ‘truth’ with a process like this), but I at least as far as my experience goes, I don’t think you need to worry.

You can probably find pre-screens on youtube. Sometimes someone will say if they got in. You can see mistakes in the videos. Mistakes have been made by admitted students. My S will usually count 5 or so mistakes in his videos. A quandry then is whether to submit the version with 5 mistakes or the faster version with 7 mistakes.

In my opinion…and people can differ on this…but this is my opinion…

You don’t have to be perfect. Quite frankly no one is. So…there is no way to be perfect. I would not pay attention to that line of thought. I think it’s just anxious talk.

Replace perfect with authentic. You are trying to be “authentic”. Who are you as an artist?. Where are you as an artist? Which teacher is best to help you grow - meaning it’s OK to have a few issues to work on - that’s normal. Being authentic is the BEST way to get the right teacher and right school.

And the “see you in Feb remark” probably means the teacher expects your kid to pass the pre-screen and is being encouraging. BUT you still need to wait for an invite…as many people will tell you here that sometimes teachers over-promise (not often but sometimes). However I would not assume that that comment implies teachers don’t listen to pre-screens. In my limited experience, they do. I would just assume it means the teachers expects the student to pass pre-screens based on past experience.

I hope that helps.

If anything is to be perfect, make it the beginning of each piece on the screen. The chances of the committee listening all the way through is not high. The will know in the first few seconds. And they are not going to hold a small glitch (later in the piece) against you. But make sure your openings are clean. Remember, this is just a bid for a chance to audition, not for acceptance to the school, so the bar is lower.

I am confused by the use of “we” and “us” particularly the “we played.” Is this a parent or a student or both or two students?

That’s because there are a lot of different experiences, depending on school, genre, instrument… No one-size-fits-all answer.

Keep in mind, also, that applicants may not be offered an audition or admission for a variety of reasons, some of which may be totally out of the applicant’s control (like they accepted no one for that instrument that year) but the schools almost never come back to tell you what those were, so people tend to speculate why they didn’t get an audition/admission. So, I agree that it’s a mistake to rely on their advice.

I really like @bridgenail’s advice to be “authentic”. You want the prescreens to accurately reflect the applicant. That said, it’s nearly impossible to avoid being at least a little stressed. For us, I let my son make the call on how he wanted to record them and with who (he had to have other musicians as back-up).

@compmom, it sounds like a parent, to me. I know that I tend to say “us”, while my son says “I”.

I am a parent. I appreciate all of the responses.

The one bit of advice I can give is if your student is applying for Jazz, then it is worth hiring musicians who are better than the applicant to play along with your son. Why? You want those listening to the prescreen to focus on the applicants playing and not inconsistencies or struggles of the “group”. My son’s teachers from his prep program encouraged him to hire them to be on his prescreen. Yes it cost more than having him play with his peers at school. But it also was a wonderful experience for our son. He had a great time making his recording with two very skilled musicians and we felt good reimbursing them for their time. Now our son often gets called by HS students to play on their recordings…so the torch gets passed along.

Also try to relax. I know it is hard…but try to enjoy the process.

I have never seen “we played.”

I liked @bridgenails response, about being authentic and playing to the best of your ability. One thing I will tell you, don’t try and game it or cheat, by trying for example to splice together multiple takes of a recording to make it appear as one continuous session, they will spot that, and from what I have been told (take it, of course, with more than a bit of salt, since it is second hand) if something sounds too perfect they will look at it closely. I think @glassharmonica was right on the money, too, that the beginning of each selection will likely determine their decision making, from what I know unless they have questions (like was that just a slip at the beginning), they won’t go all that far into any individual piece.

And remember, they are not going to penalize you for a small slip later in the recording, even if they do listen to the whole thing (unlikely.) If there is a slip early on, they will wonder about overall quality and why you didn’t record another take. But to be honest, the kinds of problems that will knock your prescreen out of the running are not wobbles and slips so much as overall technique, intonation, etc.

Additionally, to relieve some of the pressure - utlize one of the prescreen recordings for a music supplement for a school with a strong music program that does not require an audition. You will have a high level recording already made from the prescreens so use it in a application to a school that will appreciate your playing such as an LAC like Williams, Hamilton, Amherst, Tufts, Vassar etc. It will help relieve the ‘pressure’ and you may decide you like having another totally different choice in the spring when decision time arrives.

It differs at different schools, but perfection is not the goal. Promising musicality tromps that. You are right to strive to be close to perfect. Most schools will invite about half or more of the pre-screens to audition. Juilliard invites (usually) only 20%. All require a single unedited take, so pure perfection is unlikely. Just make sure your playing is really musical and not stifled by concern about perfection, but rather–immersed in expression.
Also, the experienced parents above who noted that the beginning of each piece should be strong are spot-on.

Where did you get the figure of 20% for Juilliard? Not challenging it, but just curious to know.

From faculty, the year DD was admitted. (2014) and this was for the piano dept.

Interesting-- my daughter has two degrees from Juilliard but never had to prescreen because she was in the precollege, then in the college. I didn’t realize it was that competitive just to get an audition.

Hi,

My daughter had a sample lesson from faculty at Indiana in September and this is what she said. In both auditions and prescreen ( keep in mind this is for VP) they are looking for a good tone, potential and that you demonstrate a love for what you are doing. They are not looking at vocalists who are perfected musicians. She was told should she be admitted they will bring her all the way back to square one. I"m sure that the standards they are looking for on a prescreen really are very dependent on your instrument, but this was valuable advice.

Some schools are making the swing AWAY from pre-screens now, because they are realizing that:
A) Many students simply don’t come across as well on them as they do in person
B) Not all recording equipment is equal
C) There are people who edit the %&#(* out of those things, even going as far as to cut them note by note, to make their kids sound better than the next one

Conversely, I can think of at least one top tier school that began requiring pre-screens from their VP applicants two years ago (when they had never done so before) because they felt pressure from other schools to do so. I can tell you for certain that the voice faculty doesn’t listen to them though…

Just do your very best and once it’s submitted, it’s out of your hands.

I think “C” in Mezzo’sMama’s list is a big issue. That’s why, if prescreens are required, I think schools should move towards video screens, rather than audio, as many programs have already. It’s much harder to edit video.