<p>I just found out I passed Northwestern's prescreening for violin:). The problem is I never requested a live audition date because my schedule conflicts with all three weekends. I'm also auditioning for Carnegie Mellon via recording. Can anybody share some thoughts on auditioning by recording? Will this greatly hurt my chances of getting in? By the way, I'm horrible at live auditioning. My nerves always get to me, but somehow on recording, I always play much better.</p>
<p>You should do a live audition if at all possible. It may require doing one school on a Saturday and then flying to a school that has Sunday auditions, but it will be worth it.</p>
<p>The auditioners take into account nerves, and you won’t be the only one who is nervous.</p>
<p>Conventional wisdom is you should do a live audition if you can and from what I have seen and heard (and this is just in my obviously limited view) there is a lot of truth to it. Among other things, a recording can be the result of many takes, done until it is perfect, whereas an audition is more like real life, i.e you have 5 minutes to get that job or gig. Also, a recording cannot necessarily show what the total musician is like, without the context of the person sitting in front of them you don’t see things like musical presentation, stage presence and reacting to an audience which can be part of things. From a bit I have heard from people involved with the audition process, they have often been disappointed with kids admitted via recorded auditions…</p>
<p>If all you can do is a recorded audition then obviously that is all you can do, but my take is if there is any way to do it live, do it.</p>