<p>Actually, the Curtis audition requirements for double bass include a THREE-octave B-flat major and B-flat melodic minor scale with arpeggios, and they make everyone play them. As fiddlefrog states, it is extremely hard to get all aspects of a three octave scale up to snuff at the same time. Hal Robinson, the current bass teacher there (with occasional appearances by Edgar Meyer) says that one can tell a lot about a bass player by the way they approach this particular task. That was the only place my daughter was asked to play scales.</p>
<p>Sorry for the misinformation! I didn't apply to Curtis so I wasn't sure of the requirement... But, yes! Scales are of the utmost importance! Hal and Edgar would know.</p>
<p>My son is a singer. He's only had one audition so far and did some sight reading, which he says was easy. Are there similar requirements for singers--to sing scales and start in the middle of a song? Seems instrumentalists have more audition hoops to jump through. Is this a can of worms that I shouldn't be opening?!</p>
<p>Yes sometimes they will. Usually if the panelist on the selection jury is very old school, they'll ask for it sometimes. Don't be scared of scales, just go over everything slowly. They know you're nervous and if they ask for it, it's ok if everything doesn't go 100%, they just want to see good fundamentals.</p>