Double Bass Auditions

College Majors Music Major
1

<p>Hello CC! </p>

<p>New member here. I'm a junior in high school and I've been playing the double bass since 6th grade, and I'm at the point where I'm considering which colleges/conservatories to apply to and which pieces to play. So far, in terms of focusing on music, those colleges are: Indiana University, Oberlin, Peabody, Northwestern, Boston University, and (maybe) San Francisco Conservatory (I'm a bit insecure about my abilities, if I'm completely honest). </p>

<p>Potential pieces:
Koussevitzky concerto 1st (and 2nd if necessary) movement
Vivaldi sonata in E minor 1st and 2nd movement
Bach cello suite no. 3 bour</p>

2

<p>You need a teacher to help you out! For auditions at that level you absolutely need one. Is there a reason you haven’t been working with a private teacher?</p>

3

<p>I agree that you need a private teacher. The Koussevitzky piece is challenging. My son is a Jazz Double Bassist but he studied classical as well in HS and he worked on that piece for a concerto competition. I love it!!! It is a great piece of music. But you need guidance because not only is it demanding but you will also need an accompanist and guidance about how to work with one. </p>

<p>Sorry I don’t know the answer to the other questions because my son auditioned for Jazz.</p>

4

<p>Each school has their own list of requirements that change slightly from year to year. You need to go to the website for each school to find out what this years requirements are and start there. We did a spreadsheet for many daughter that included the requirements for each school. If you don’t have a private teacher, your lower strings teacher at school should be able to help you figure some of this out. </p>

<p>You do not need to memorize, but these pieces are probably not enough to cover what you will need for auditions. My daughter had a larger list that she had prepared for her auditions this year as different schools wanted different things.</p>

<p>Sent from my Nexus 7 using CC</p>

5

<p>I’ve never had a teacher because my parents won’t allow it. They aren’t willing to pay for it, nor will they let me pay for them. They aren’t the most supportive in terms of my desire to make music my career, which is understandable from the financial perspective. Therefore I’ve been pretty much on my own in preparing these. </p>

<p>I’ll be making a spreadsheet soon of requirements and matching them with pieces.</p>

6

<p>You really need a private teacher to help you with this. What are you auditioning for? Performance or education or something else? Does your school have scholarships to help pay for private instruction? Many schools have some money for this but it may not be widely known. Ask your school music teacher. This is a hard journey. Can you talk with you parents and maybe have them read the great article on here on auditoning for music schools. There are other costs you will have to find a way to pay for such as making prescreening recprdings if this applies to bass and travel for audition. You also might want to come up with some additional school as well. (Safety ones.) Good luck to you.</p>

7

<p>Classical bassists have very, very few schools that require prescreens, so that isn’t a worry. Auditions can get expensive too, but that is the same thing with college visits, so that may balance out.</p>

<p>You must have an in-school teacher. Talk to him/her and explain your situation. He/she should be able to give you more guidance.</p>

<p>My daughter is sitting next to me and said you will probably need an etude as well, such as Simandl 17 (15 would work well too).</p>

<p>Do you already know any of the pieces you have listed?</p>

8

<p>Other costs I can deal with, although I probably won’t be able to travel to the schools themselves to audition. Will that be an issue? I know a lot of schools have regional auditions and/or accept recordings in place of auditioning in person. I actually do have other colleges in mind already as safety schools, but I figured listing those wouldn’t be needed. </p>

<p>Oh! Thank you for reminding me about the </p>

9

<p>Most schools for bass don’t accept recorded auditions. Those that do require videos not audio FWIW. Every school my D auditioned at required an etude so you really will need one. If you have none of the pieces down already you are at a serious disadvantage. You really should look at some programs with less stringent requirements…</p>

<p>Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using CC</p>

10

<p>Concertos are typically memorized. By the time you have practiced the Kouss enough to be able to play it reliably in an audition, you will likely have most of it memorized whether you set out to do that or not. If you cannot play the double stop sections in tune, up to speed and with some sort of musical direction, you should probably not be using that piece for auditions. Practice with a metronome. Record and listen carefully to your sessions so that you know for certain how you sound.</p>

<p>Orchestral excerpts and etudes are almost never required to be played from memory. Many schools will permit the use of printed music for pretty much anything other than concerto movements, but you have to check the requirements at each one. A few want the sonatas and other solo material memorized. A few let you use printed music for everything, even concertos.</p>

<p>Check the requirements carefully to see exactly what you need. Preparing more than you really need will cost you time that you may not have. Oberlin, for example, did not require a concerto at all when my daughter auditioned there. The most difficult piece she played for them was the Eccles sonata and she was admitted with scholarship money. She used Kouss for her other schools, but auditioned early at Oberlin when her concerto was not quite ready for prime time.</p>

<p>The spreadsheet is a critical tool for planning your auditions and you should prepare one now. Be ready to drop a school from your short list if their requirements and only their requirements are forcing you to spread your practice time too thin on pieces you need to learn for all the others.</p>

<p>Many of the schools on your list will have you play the entire audition without an accompanist, even for the sonatas and concerto movements. They want to make sure you are not leaning on the accompaniment to stay in tune. Be prepared to do this.</p>

<p>If BU asks you to list teachers with whom you wish to study, be very careful. If you only list the teachers whose studios are hardest to get into (Barker, for example) and you are not accepted by one of the teachers on your list, you will be rejected by BU even if your audition would have been good enough to get you into the studio of one of the other teachers who was not on your list. You have to decide whether you will only attend BU if you get the teacher you want, or if you would be willing to work with one of the others.</p>

<p>I am a little concerned in that you have no private teacher and your list includes mostly schools where the competition for spots will be at a fairly high level. Perhaps you have gotten to that level on your own, perhaps not. Have you ever competed or auditioned against other bassists who are trying to get into top conservatories, possibly for all-state, summer programs or seating positions in an orchestra? If it turns out that you are not playing at a high enough level to get into one of these top programs, what would happen then? You might want to add some schools to your list that are less well-known but happen to have an excellent bass teacher.</p>

11

<p>I feel badly for you that your parents are so unsupportive. It seems pretty unreasonable that they won’t let you pay for lessons with your own money. Would it help to tell them that you are far more likely to get scholarship money if you have some private lessons to improve your playing? Is there an adult, like your school music teacher who would be willing to speak to them with you?</p>

12

<p>I talked to my orchestra director and it just so happens that a bass coach from the SF Symphony education program is coming in tomorrow, so I’m hoping to talk to him about 1) Working out something in order to get private lessons, 2) Repertoire, and 3) Bass repair. On several occasions I feel like I’m biting off more than I can chew, working on my own like this. My mind is pretty set on learning and memorizing the 1st movement of the Koussevitzky because ideally I’ll be auditioning with it as a senior solo in my orchestra, but anything I find that I’m willing to cut down on, even if it means taking out a college on this list, I will more than likely take out. </p>

<p>I’ve never competed in anything other than All-City orchestra, which doesn’t say much at all, I know. That’s why I’m worried about my chances because as ambitious as I am, I feel extremely limited without private lessons. I haven’t made a list of other colleges with lower levels of competition because I don’t know that many, to be honest. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Barry Green at UC Santa Cruz. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Overall though, I’m extremely thankful for all the advice you guys have given me so far. It’s shaped my goals a bit more.</p>

13

<p>If you live in the Bay Area and you really can’t afford lessons, apply to the Young Musicians Program at UC Berkeley. It’s free for deserving students. [UC</a> Berkeley Young Musicians Program: Welcome to YMP!](<a href=“http://ymp.berkeley.edu%5DUC”>http://ymp.berkeley.edu) You could also apply to the School of the Arts in San Francisco for senior year. Both are outstanding for musical education. And free.</p>

14

<p>Hi,
I’m just a student, so I don’t know too much, but I empathize with your situation, so I would like to help you out.</p>

<p>First of all I encourage you to contact the schools you are specifically looking at by email or phone. The people in the admissions office are also very helpful. Bass faculty members are very nice and helpful and they don’t mind getting a lot of emails. Email repeatedly if you don’t get a reply. I mean, if two weeks go by then feel free to email again. They will normally get back to you. Admissions offices usually get back to you in a timely manner.</p>

<p>Every piece you listed including the second movement of the Koussevitzky contrast with the first movement of the Koussevitzky. Play the two you play the best. You can always contact the bass teachers at the schools you are applying to in order to make sure that your repertoire is okay. </p>

<p>The only school I auditioned at that required any memorization was Curtis. If the guidelines do not mention memorization, then you should feel free to use music. Feel free to contact any faculty member at a school where you are uncertain about whether you need to memorize and ask specifically about it.</p>

<p>The scherzo and trio from Beethoven 5 can be considered two different excerpts. You can choose to play just the one you play best.</p>

<p>It also does not hurt to ask schools about substituting repertoire, for example, maybe schools that require two movements of a sonata would be okay with hearing the Koussevitzky. Don’t substitute without asking, but asking about it may allow you to learn less repertoire.</p>

<p>If you consider playing another concerto then, the Dragonetti (composed by Nanny) concerto and the Dittersdorf are nice and may be easier for you to learn on your own. The last piece in the third volume of George Vance’s Progressive Repertoire book has the Dragonetti at the end with good fingerings. I am totally willing to send you a scan of the music with fingerings if you want. (Fingerings from an experienced player are very useful and may help you learn a piece more easily. If you can get a teacher to give you fingerings for all of your pieces or just get some from another friend who plays bass with a teacher you may benefit from them. I found that when I got fingerings from a teacher they were well thought out. )</p>

<p>Most schools accept recorded auditions. I am pretty sure all the schools you listed accept recordings. Usually video is preferred. Email the admissions offices of the music school or the bass faculty in order to be certain whether you can send a tape and whether video is required. I also wanted to let you know that many times submitting a tape may cost up to twenty dollars because of fees charged by the online submission services that the schools use. I didn’t realize this until I submitted my own tapes this year.</p>

<p>You are applying to competitive schools and getting a teacher would be greatly in your interest. There is a lot that is difficult to teach yourself and it is difficult to sift through the many poor resources on the internet to figure out what you really need to do to become a great bass player.</p>

<p>You may want to look at schools that San Francisco Symphony players teach at that may be less well known. Most symphony players will know what they are talking about even if the school isn’t famous. I don’t know your level, but it is entirely possible that any teacher will help put you on the right path and prepare you for the future. Probably most of the UC’s with music schools have teachers that can help you. Schools that I know are less well-known but have good teachers are Catholic University in Washington DC, University of Maryland College Park , and Temple University. </p>

<p>I feel for you not being able to get lessons. I couldn’t get them for a long time. Good luck!</p>