The preparation continues for the Berklee audition Saturday. Buffalo is getting some lake-effect snow tomorrow but forecast looks good for Buffalo and Boston for Saturday (by good I mean 28 degrees and sunny for all you southerners. Lol.) They are just doing a one-day trip, flying there early and returning late to avoid hotel cost. We made sure to have some cushion time before the audition but the last thing we need is a snow storm to mess things up! I called Berklee to see if she could use or rent a practice room for an hour before the audition but no such luck, she will only get the 15 minute practice time. I think the Boston airport is fairly close to campus so they will probably just take a Lyft to make it simple. Berklee does not provide a mic and says vocalists can bring their own or just not use one, so not sure what my daughter plans to do. They told her to remind them she needs a room with a piano or keyboard upon arrival so hopefully that won’t be a problem for her original song.
My daughter applied to Frost but did not apply Early Action. My understanding is that technically Frost doesn’t do Early Action because musicians have to do auditions later in the game. However, if you apply EA, you can at least get a decision on whether you are accepted academically. I do know of some who were accepted academically, but did not get into the music program they wanted due to audition scores. So they found out the academic decision early but were not told of audition results until March. But I think students can go on a waiting list for those programs if they are open to the risk. I know my daughter’s ACT/SAT scores are low or borderline for Miami so the audition will be key in her case. She did not apply EA but did get an email stating that they were still going through prescreen materials and would be updating her Canelink Account, but that “I do not expect this will happen before late December.” She is hoping for a February audition date if she passes the prescreen so at least we will have SOME planning time to book her flight.
@mperrine- it varies for each college but I am hearing it’s not unusual to get 3-4 week notice of audition dates. It’s awful for those of us on a budget or with crazy schedules but that seems to be the norm.
@akapiratequeen Eastman has a digital booklet on how to prepare for successful auditions. One suggestion on simulating stress was to run up and down the stairs a few times to get your heart rate up. My daughter did it at school. It tickled her choir teacher but it did seem to be useful.
@akapiratequeen what about plane flights? hotels you can cancel… but you are dinged for flights… also they gave us 2 different dates to choose from. I am not even sure she will get a live audition…yikes… waiting 3 weeks I might explode
@mperrine that’s a tough one! Fingers crossed you hear soon.
So we’ve hit our first big snag: one of the programs S is auditioning for has informed him that the jazz audition, which is surprisingly truncated (one piece of your choice) must be supplemented by a full classical audition, with at least two different pieces (S only has one ready) from a relatively short list.
S tried writing but was told in no uncertain terms that, even for a jazz major, the priority for this program director is classical performance. The audition isn’t for another month so he could put his head down and learn the pieces, but he also has four jazz pieces to work on so he’s not enthusiastic about the idea. Most of all, he’s concerned that this school doesnt seem to take jazz seriously enough to be a good fit for him.
So I’m not sure what to do. He’d like to withdraw his application, which will leave him with six schools. Two of those required a prescreen, so we don’t know if he’ll even be auditioning, dropping the number down to four. I’d feel so much better about it if he even had one acceptance. But I agree that this school’s attitude toward jazz is troubling.
@akapiratequeen I am not sure about which school you are talking about. I would worry more about the required classes than I would about the auditions. S has had some experience in jazz in the some of the schools you are looking at and D has had a lot (neither will be jazz majors). For example, E has a completely separate theory and music history program for jazz. I for example does not (I don’t know about L). D says that at I they take jazz very seriously (she has played with some of their combos) and S says jazz there is great but you will be exposed to a lot of classical and deal with classical profs. I know you have been to the E summer program and can use them as comparison.
I can understand your concern with only four potential auditions. We were in exactly the same boat and I was VERY nervous. On the other hand, if learning a new classical piece would jeopardize his jazz preparation, that would make me even more nervous. We dropped a couple of schools because they required 4 years of science. We figured it was not worth jeopardizing audition preparation by adding a stressful senior year class. None of the schools were top choices, so he dropped them, thus both lowering one kind of stress and raising another. In other words, if the school is a top choice, go for it, If not, drop it and don’t look back.
By the way, we have asked for Feb 7 at Eastman. If we both get that date, let me know (I know you asked for the next week).
Re practice rooms before auditions, we found that if we asked at schools, we were told no. Too much of a hassle for them to reserve practice rooms for you, I guess. But at these big music schools we found there were usually practice rooms available anyway so we just went in and used one. If someone came in and had the room reserved, we just moved to another.
For sight reading and music theory, by vocalist son also needed some work and was sometimes out of his depth during audition sight readings. One thing that helped was we got him some private piano lessons with a HS music teacher, who also spent a good part of the lesson working on sight reading and music theory. He also used books to study on his own.
@mperrine Yes, hotels you can cancel, but not flights. I did purchase flight insurance when we booked our New Orleans flight because we knew the audition was Saturday but had mixed info on whether they had activities for students on the Friday before. I think it was $40 extra per person through Expedia but it was worth it because we did have to make a change. One of the Miami audition dates is during our Spring Break, which is convenient, but the price difference was from $200 to $650 per ticket! And that was with early booking so hate to see what it is if they give us shorter notice! Hate to have her miss school, but no way we are paying $650, so we chose Feb.8th if she passes prescreens.
Thank you guys for suggesting booking the hotels before getting notifications of the audition dates then cancelling later on when needed. Will do so in the next few days!
Like @AmyIzzy says, flight insurance is an excellent idea! Also, look for carriers with generous flight change policies (like Southwest). On audition weekends, especially in smaller places, rooms can fill up FAST, so making lodging arrangements well ahead of time is a really good idea. I want to make another plug for AirBnb style lodgings; they are often more comfortable, include kitchen facilities, and your child can practice and warm up in them (HUGE plus…of course, check about this before booking). Also, if there’s a little extra room to spread out, it’s easier to get good rest, and avoid sharing illness (especially important for vocalists). Don’t forget the travel humidifier!!! Very important in cold weather climates!
@akapiratequeen my son practices sight reading for his instrument using sight reading books, orchestral music that he isn’t familiar with, piano music, anything he can get his hands on. For voice (at least one of S’s music ed interviews requires a demonstration of singing voice and sight singing even for instrumental music ed applicants) he generally uses all state sight reading excerpts from previous years that he gets from his choir teacher. I’d second piano lessons though. So much of sight reading is being able to quickly pick out key signature and other elements of the piece. Good sight reading comes in part from a good knowledge of theory, and my son picked up so much of that in piano lessons long before he started on his other instruments.
We try and fly Southwest for the generous change and cancellation policies. With two college students it’s allowed us flexibility and saved us a ton of money all those times they realized they’d be done with finals on Tuesday and we had booked a flight for Saturday. @AmyIzzy we have a potential audition date over spring break too. Would be nice not to miss school but costly! Getting my college kids home for spring break was always the most expensive flight of the school year. D16 had a scholarship weekend college visit in the spring break period. It wasn’t her spring break so it wasn’t on our radar. Lines at airport security were massive and even arriving 2 hours early we almost missed the flight.
@Parentof2014grad we have been reflecting on the travel budget for auditions as well as travel time, layovers, etc. We are probably going to Chicago for the CalArts audition, but I looked into the option of a campus audition and it would require 10 hour flight travel time each way and 2 layovers and was triple the cost of the Chicago flight. So when we look at our “bottom line” when all offers are in, we are including travel cost in our decision process. Even with great scholarships, the cost of travel may cancel some of that out. My daughter insists she won’t need to come home much (sounds like she will really miss us! Lol) and I suppose we could limit our visits to Parent Weekend, but I’m sure there will be concerts we will want to see (sorry, live videos just aren’t the same) or even emergencies which could require last minute flight booking. So even a few trips, especially if we take my son and have to book at peak times, would be quite costly. We aren’t ruling anything out and there are MANY factors which will go into our decision, but it’s something we have to be realistic about.
@Parentof2014grad Thank you for your comments re: sightreading! My son is a pretty strong reader – he’s got four years of piano lessons plus three of music theory, including AP, under his belt. I think he just panics in the audition environment. That said, it won’t hurt him to go back and practice, practice, practice. In general I think he does worst at the things he thinks he knows cold, and thus doesn’t prepare for, than on the new pieces.
@akapiratequeen regarding sightreading in auditions—about a year ago, my son came across a sightreading excerpt in an audition that he had seen before from practicing sightreading with his teacher in lessons. Doing a lot of practice with sightreading standard repertoire that you haven’t played, makes that repertoire a little more familiar if he encounters it in the future, and hopefully has a positive effect on the nerves aspect too.
For those of you who did the Berklee audition, did their website “audition guidelines” section help with prep? I think it provides some practice drills or guidance for sightreading, ear training, etc.which my daughter bookmarked but I haven’t looked through myself. She felt the sightreading/music theory part of the Loyola audition was really easy, the College of Saint Rose was a little more challenging but still “easy” but I’m guessing Berklee will be pretty challenging.
@AmyIzzy my S did not find it useful. The ear training was simple call and response; he did find the sight reading challenging but they gave it to him in the practice session and I think it was mostly nerves. He was familiar with the context and what they did was pretty standard, I think. He felt those guidelines were most useful for people who hadn’t done other auditions.
The things he did find really useful were:
Role playing the audition–we had him “do” the whole audition for us a couple of times the week before he headed up, from introducing himself to shaking hands to setting up his iphone/bluetooth player and playing, to asking him the interview questions. He said they really did ask the questions on the website, eg What do you bring to the Berklee community? And Why does the Berklee philosophy appeal to you? We spoke about these in great detail on the train up and he thought he did really well with the interview.
Practicing with the playalong and bluetooth. To the extent possible, he recreated the audition conditions the week before during practice. It gave him more confidence and he felt he “nailed” the prepared piece.
@akapiratequeen I can relate to the struggle of adding a classical piece when classical is not the main focus. As mentioned above, if the program requires classical training that is what I would focus on. Do the requirements of the program change your child’s feeling about this program.
For my DD working on a classical piece for auditions became a chore. ( This was a program that required extensive classical training before moving on to jazz, commercial etc.) Within a few weeks we had to give this some serious thought as to why it was so burdensome for her. We decided it was a sign that this was not the type of program she really wanted to pursue. She dropped that program from her list and a huge weight was lifted. I think each issue they face is part of the process of guiding them to the right school.
Best wishes, it will all work out.
@AmyIzzy - our daughter was very thankful that she took a look at the questions on the Berklee audition page before she went in for her audition this summer. She realized that she needed to work on her sightreading for the next one. I know that someone asked earlier about how to best do that…JB Dyas wrote an article for Downbeat called “Getting the Big Scholarship” (or something similar to that) and this might just apply to jazz but he says to: Work on your sight-reading. Do it daily. Two excellent books are Melodic Rhythms for Guitar by William Leavitt and Reading Contemporary Guitar Rhythms by M.T. Szymczak. Both are good for all treble clef instruments. For bass clef, I suggest Develop Sight Reading for All Bass Clef Instruments, Volumes 1 & 2 by Gaston Dufresne. Good luck to her on Saturday. I’ll be thinking good thoughts (and I believe there is another musician auditioning that day, too?).
@akapiratequeen - Boo Hiss on the school that requires all the classical stuff for a jazz musician. Our daughter cut her teeth in classical but now doesn’t want to go near it so that would be a “no go” for her. (even though she could probably muster it. If you read this, could you let me know what school that was/is? Just curious.
Well - sadly, our daughter dropped CalArts from her list. She just ran our of time doing pre-screens (plus she’s prepping for the Next Gen Women’s Jazz audition). But the main reason is that she has a singer/songwriter friend who goes to Cal Arts and he HATES it. He said he’s bored. Even though I told her that everyone has different taste - she said that her friend also feels very disconnected from the LA scene (it’s apparently fairly far from LA?). Oh boy. Now her list is only 5. Should make for a fairly easy audition schedule - Feb. 1 in LA for Berklee, Feb.3 in Boston (if she makes the NEC cut which she’s heard can be difficult), then Feb.4/5 in NYC for MSM and the New School (if they happen to offer those dates. (here’s hoping). And not sure when SFCM is. So - only 2 cities (Boston and NYC). And SF and not a difficult drive from LA.
