<p>It's almost impossible to make a near perfect audition tape. Just wondering for those who have made one, did you have any wrong, flat/sharp notes, etc in your tapes? How much will it affect you? What should be the limit for mistakes? I'm talking about submission to All-State/County Honor Bands and college supplements.</p>
<p>For audition tapes that cannot be edited where you are selecting the best single take out of several, then I would agree that it is almost impossible to get something you are 100% happy about. If you wind up with something that is an honest demonstration of your abilities on a good day, you should be satisfied with that. You don't want your recording to make any promises that your voice or instrument cannot keep at this stage. </p>
<p>At an All-State level or in an audition or prescreening recording for an intended performance major, I would think that there should not be any wrong notes, intonation should only be a problem in rare and extreme circumstances and most of your issues should be with musical interpretation. All-County is likely to be somewhat more forgiving. The quality needed for a college supplement for a music minor or for someone who just wants to play with the orchestra or band will vary widely with the college and instrument or voice type in question.</p>
<p>Once you get into the realm where professional editing is allowed, then you really should be striving for as close to perfection as is reasonable.</p>
<p>Unless you are a mega star who can afford to record one note each day with a full orchestra behind them, you will never be totally happy with your recording. Pick a day when you are on and do your best and then don't dwell on the mistakes - use the CD as a tool for continuing to refine your talent! Good Luck!</p>
<p>Nothing ever sounds perfect when you listen to it - I'm sure even the best pros pick their performances apart, but I'm with BassDad that there shouldn't be any wrong notes in an audition tape. If so, then the piece isn't ready.</p>
<p>We had DD's voice teacher help throughout the process. He was there for recording and made sure there was a good take. He picked the takes from the master that would go on the final CD. He knew how to trade off the various little issues, which ones were not really important and which were killers (bad takes). We used the CD for NFAA (did not video last year) and pre-screenings so it was worth it.</p>
<p>My D is recording a CD that will probably just be sent to one school as a pre-screening. That school just requires that the rep and her name, etc. appear on the CD. She will also have it in case of emergency - a weather CD I suppose. Do the vocalists introduce themselves on the CD and say what they will sing or is that just covered on the label and they go right to the performance on the CD.</p>
<p>I cannot stress enough the value of making a CD to cover weather, flight, and health (especially for singers, but string players have injuries, too) emergencies. If a singer is not at vocal best, a reasonable rendering showing style and presence can be augmented with CD showing the voice in good health.</p>
<p>That was my thought too Lorelei - what about the introduction on the CD - is that done?</p>
<p>Auditions for schools are not blind, they know who they are hearing. Even the prescreen auditions require that the musician's name, pieces, sometimes age are written on the CD. That might be the best way to do it. Include a phone number, maybe.....write small. Go to some of the web sites about auditions which allow CD's, and see what the specifications are.</p>
<p>Not even professionals can make flawless CDs without many (hundreds?) of edits. And believe me, I've heard many professional recordings that still have intonation issues (just listened to one as a matter of fact). If you are a high school student, you are still learning and there will be flaws...just don't worry about them. Teachers/judges look for potential...if the overall intonation, sound, technique and musicality are all there, they will not expect every note to be perfect. Do not edit. I heard a story once about a violinist who tried to pass off a professional recording of a Bach Partita as her own. The professor had just heard that recording and recognized it. Needless to say, the outcome was not positive.
Do the best you can and go with it...no one else has perfect recordings either.
Good luck!</p>
<p>It was when my S began pointing out to me that the horn player in the Boston Symphony missed his queue, or would crack up because a CD recording of a professional orchestration had a musician with a flat note, that I knew he had reached a much more sopohisticated level of music than I would ever grasp. </p>
<p>It was the same thing with my D earlier. When she was 16 we were in attendance at a major symphony orchestra, when a musician played an entire passage of Beethoven 5 in the wrong key. Her eyes popped out like she had seen a ghost, but when she told me what had just happened, I looked around and no one else seemed to have noticed. I certainly hadn't. She actually went to ask the musician about it afterward and he said he had spaced out and played the first note in the wrong key, and it would have been worse to switch keys in the middle of the passage.</p>
<p>The real point I wanted to make is that I use this when my now S live auditions, to remind him that even the professionals are not perfect, either. I also remind him that his sister placed 2nd in a concerto competition in which she was so tired, she forgot parts of her piece! But the comments that came back later from the judges was that when she played, it felt to them that it was exactly how Mozart had intended. It is so much more than just the notes.</p>
<p>In Atlanta we have a music critic who doesn't like the ASO. We have a joke that if the only thing he can find to critique are the horns, then it was probably a very good performance. There will nearly ALWAYS be mistakes from the horn section in a live, unedited performance - it's that kind of instrument. But most of us don't hear them, only the other horn players.</p>
<p>Also, with string virtuosic pieces, it will be a challenge to produce a flawless performance. There will be a spot with an intonation problem, or a missed note in a fast, complicated slur or bow-crossing, or what-have-you. Pick the take that sounds best, and go forward.</p>
<p>We didn't know what was the "right" way to do things with D's DVD, but she did introduce herself at the start, on a separate track. If they didn't want that info, they could skip that track. She gave her name and the pieces she would be playing. We also labeled the DVD with the same info. It seems that I remember some schools having specific instructions, but this particular school did not.</p>
<p>I haven't seen this on any other of S's possibilities, but Indiana's Jacobs School of Music says: "At the beginning of the recording, please state your name, degree objective and (if you are an undergraduate) whether you are a freshman or transfer from another school."</p>
<p>Re: perfection in recordings. Give me expressiveness over perfection any day. Of course, great expression and great technique are the ideal!</p>
<p>Last year Indiana seemed to want the auditioner's identification on each band of the recording. My son didn't remember to do that so he just put a short ipod recorded statement before each band and Indiana had no problem with that. Labeling the cd itself is important for any school. (Can you imagine how many cds they are accumulating!) He also labeled his "Final Audition" because he couldn't make the trip out to audition. I was uncomfortable that he wasn't live auditioning, because it's a great school and I was afraid they wouldn't take him as seriously, plus there was a French word that he pronounced as though it were German (cloche) and a good deal of phlegm in his last piece. He recorded all 7 songs (for all auditions) in an hour and 15 minutes. I wondered if they wouldn't wonder why he didn't rerecord it especially if they knew how little time he'd spent. Me, too, but what was on the tape was sung with expression and naturally good technique and that's what they were looking for just like neumes: he was accepted on the basis of the recording in the first of the three rounds of auditions. Good luck to this year's auditioners!</p>
<p>mommybird--This is good to hear! My S is sending his CD as "Final Audition" for the same reason--can't get there to audition. Good idea to add an ipod recording if he forgets during the CD recording. S has an awful cough at the moment and may not make the CD deadline with a good recording. He plans on extracting the audio from his NFAA iMovie clips if he's not good to go in a week. Hoping that isn't the case, as there were some no-so-lovely high notes in one piece and the wrong word in another! But lots of expression, at least in his voice. Congrats to your son--is he at Indiana now?</p>
<p>oh, sorry, H tells me that he made a separate audio recording on DAT tape I. Never mind my saying he'd extracting audio from imovie, although that could be a possibility.</p>
<p>There is a 3rd option for those of you that can't make it to the school and are unhappy with their CD's-look to see if there are regional auditions. I have no idea whether Indiana has them, but my D did them for Oberlin & Northwestern.</p>
<p>My daughter made a CD to send off to schools (voice) It had a couple mistakes. I wanted to retape it but her voice teacher said it would be better to send it with some flaws. People can edit CD's and do all kinds of things to make it perfect. If you leave the few flaws, they will have a better idea of your potential, which is what they are looking for.</p>
<p>We made a label ( From a computer program I bought at Walmart) It had her picture, name, area of concentration, the names of each song and the track number for each. It came out really nice!</p>
<p>I don't meant to worry you in the least - I just don't want future readers to think it is expected/ encouraged for you to have flaws on your tape as proof that you didn't edit the CD. Since you have the option of doing it over as many times as you need to, having obvious flaws on the tape is something you should avoid in my opinion. They do not give a better idea of your potential - they may just indicate that you may not know there are flaws or that you didn't think they were important enough to redo the piece.</p>
<p>It must be somewhat different for voice. In one of my daughter's songs, she went sharp on a note, and a couple other minor flaws. But, she was still invited to audition at top schools, - CCM, Carnegie Mellon, still waiting to hear from a couple of others. Because she made it through the pre-screening, even with mistakes, I am assuming they are listening for potential.</p>