Has anyone used a good song selection coach in getting their kids ready for musical theater auditions?
We used MTCA (Musical Theater College Auditions) in preparing for our D’s audition season. I cannot say enough good things about them. I’m sure others will also chime in about MTCA, and other options. I liked the fact that MTCA uses many different coaches, which made finding a personality match for my D very easy. We used them primarily to help with monologue selection - most of her song selection came from her long time local voice teacher - but I know many have happily and successfully used them for song selection - and they did make suggestions for my D that resulted in her switching out one of her songs. Search this forum for “audition coach” and I’m sure you’ll find LOTS of posts to help you in your search. Best of luck @musicalmama!
We also used MTCA, to help select songs and monologue, plus help with coaching them. They were amazing.
Mary Anna Dennard connected us to a fabulous song coach. I call him the song whisperer. d got many compliments on her songs. Still stays in touch with him. He really understood her voice type, strengths and personality and found songs that were a wonderful fit. Brent Wagner at Michigan even wrote one down he liked it so much and had forgotten the show! I believe Moo has several she recommends and they are all at an hourly rate. Not only did he pick songs, he coached them, provided sheet music for all cuts of all songs and also recorded accompaniment for all cuts of all songs (16 bars, 32 bars and full song). And Mary Anna is fantastic with selecting and coaching monologues. We would highly recommend them!
I third MTCA…Gary @ CMU asked my D to send her the song she sang at auditions (she did), and he remarked on what a great choice it was. MTCA is fabulous and helping choose songs.
Thanks everyone! Very helpful! When using the coaches did anyone have to use coaches from multiple sources or was it 1 stop shopping for songs, dance,& monologues? Thanks for all the help!
Can you tell me who your song coach was at MTCA? Thanks!
Mary Anna Dennard has several. One is Steven Lutvak who composed the Tony award winning musical, A Gentleman Guide To Love and Murder. She also has one in California and another in New York.
@musicalmama, when you work with MTCA, as my daughetr did 4 years ago and is now graduating from NYU, your student will most likely be placed with one song coach, a different monologue coach and if you want, a different dance coach. All the coaches are working professionals and your student will be placed with ones that will seem to be a best match. You can also have your student take advantage of other coaches for vocal instruction (mine did for learning a belt/mix) if you like. This can be done over skype as well as in person. We live in the Pacific Northwest and traveled to NYC during a school visit trip sophomore year for original placement, but we know those who did all their coaching over skype and didn’t actually meet their coaches in person until Unifieds! Tomorrow or the next day, MTCA will post their annual website ‘redo’ which will list where all their coached students have been accepted this year and where they will attend next year. I know it will be impressive. With MTCA you choose how much coaching you want and when. I highly, highly recommend them! Please pm me if you want more info.
MTCA and Mary Anna work very similarly. You can work with Mary Anna and her vocal coaches on an hourly basis as much or as little as you need. They work via Skype if you are not located near them. There are a wide variety of master classes and mock auditions you can attend throughout each year at various locations around the country. She also attends Unifieds. Like MTCA, you can go to Mary Anna’s college audition coach website and see where her students were accepted this year. Both groups of coaches are very successful. Dave Clemmons is another good choice. I would talk to each, see which fits your personality and budget and then make a choice. They are all very good.
@musicalmama Ellen from MTCA chose the songs for my daughter. My daughter then worked with a vocal technique coach, a monologue coach and had a coaching coordinator who she worked with on the "acting " of the songs. They were a great team of wonderful mentors for my daughter.
I was just on mtca’s website to look at acceptances - and it was really interesting. Now I know that many/most schools accept more than they need etc- but there were a number of schools (Ithaca, BoCo Syracuse, Otterbein and BW particularly jumped out at me) where we’ll over 1/2 the class could be mtca’s kids. If you add in Moo kids (she hasn’t updated for 2015 yet) and I imagine the % will be even higher.
^^Mich also. You have to be impressed with the acceptances rates of all of these coaches. And I think what you read in the testimonials is actually what is going on. A coach can’t make a kid more talented but they can help them with confidence and material selection and these are both critical to success in college auditions or anywhere else. My D will likely stay in touch with her acting coach and work with him for years to come. These are benefits we did not expect and my D didn’t even do the audition circuit as she was accepted early to her top school!
One of the things I found interesting was that it seemed to be the MT schools that had the highest #s of acceptances (I saw a couple for schools like Boston, purchase, Rutgers, minn Guthrie that are top for straight acting). It made me wonder if coaching is much less common for kids focused exclusively on that area.
@toowonderful I would not infer that less people use coaches who are seeking acting programs based on the list of schools that MTCA kids are matriculating at. While MTCA surely coaches kids who want an Acting degree and not just MT degrees, I would think a higher percentage of clients seeking out MTCA are those seeking MT degrees. Perhaps those trying for Acting may tend to locate and find coaches that purely deal with acting mostly and not MT. For example, for those who may not realize that MTCA offers coaching for straight acting, they may assume that they don’t given the name of the business.
@soozievt- you may certainly be correct, but I wonder if MT (by nature of competitiveness, need for multiple elements etc) candidates are more likely to coach. Just anecdotally (by reading through threads on theater forum) it seems less common- and also seemed less common on the Mtca site in schools known as powerhouses for acting rather than mt. Just an observation - but relevant to the “packaged” discussion (eg prescreens) on final decisions thread yesterday. Are we heading towards a place where you can’t be successful without one- and what does that mean to the audition pool/process as a whole?
I certainly hope not. I would prefer the opposite, a return to all kids doing their own research, finding their own songs, reading plays to make their own choices of monologues, and I know more than a few auditors who have the same wish. It worked for years for thousands of students. And the process has always been competitive.
As far as coaching goes, I don’t think you can go back now that it is so prevalent. But I don’t have an issue with that. I think there is a presumption by some that kids who are coached are not natural, not themselves and overly polished. There also seems to be some feeling that somehow they are getting an unfair advantage over kids who do not have a coach. I found there could not be anything further from the truth.
For us, lacking resources in our area, a coach helped us understand how the process works, helped us learn about schools we would have never thought to research, helped us consider songs and monologues we would have never known about. They were a fantastic resource. They really took time to get to know our D, know her personality, know her strengths and skills and help guide her towards schools and material that were suitable for her. I do not know why that is a bad thing for anyone. To me it is no different than those kids who are lucky enough to have local voice and acting teachers who can advise them on schools, songs and monologues. And for those who didn’t need a coach to help you with any of that, I applaud you. It is a strange and cumbersome process.
As far as how being coached looks during the auditions- I know our coaches did not make our D wear a certain thing or act a certain way. They wanted her to present her unique self to the best of her abilities. And by helping her understand the process and develop material that was good for her, she was able to do that. No different than if your voice teacher was able to help you pick a good song, coach you on how to present it and talk to you about what you should wear and do in the audition room.
As far as getting help with learning about which schools to consider, I think working with a coach to come up with a list of schools to apply to for MT is no different than nonMT kids using a college counselor or planner to fine tune their own list of schools. Why is it ok to use a college planner to get advice on what schools are good for your child interested in engineering or international business, but not ok to use someone knowledgable about schools for MT if that is your area of interest?
Sometimes I think it is the word “coach” that throws people off. Maybe it would be better if we called them “teacher”. Basically, Ds coaches were her voice teacher, acting teacher and college counselor all rolled into a college audition coach. I don’t want to get in any arguments about coaching. I know there are some who are not fans. But I really just don’t understand why it ruffles so many feathers. If you are one who is not a fan, just consider that there are a lot of people for whom this process is intimidating and for whom there are not people knowledgable about it in their local communities. So MTCA, Moo, Dave Clemmons and others are providing an invaluable service for people who have nobody at home to guide them. And by no means do you have to have a coach to be accepted to a college program.
I also think by worrying about coaching providing some advantage that others don’t have, that we are underestimating the college professionals watching the auditions. I do think that they can distinguish between someone who might be “overly coached” and they can spot a “diamond in the rough”. Sure they are going to miss some great talent every year. That happens not only in the MT audition world, it happens in life. But I don’t think someone who doesn’t have the skills they are looking for can fool them just by having worked with a coach. Are coaches successful? Many times yes. But there are always students who work with coaches that don’t get in the schools they hoped to and occasionally not in to any school at all. It is not a failsafe strategy. Again, it is up to the student themselves to do the work needed beforehand and to be able to show it in the audition room. The coach cannot do that for them. They can only help them prepare.
So, that was a very long way of saying - I hope we can give those who choose to use a coach a break. They are not bad people, nor are college audition coaches bad people nor are they providing bad services. There are some of us that really need the services they are providing and are thankful they are available. I don’t think they are skewing the process in any way. In fact, they are evening the playing field for people like us who had no knowledge or teachers to help. Now we do.
I agree!
ditto. Well said, @vvnstar