My child is wanting to sing a couple songs that have not been officially released to the public yet. She has found the sheet music on random websites that people have transposed themselves. Do colleges have an issue with applicants singing this kind of material?
It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s not currently on broadway. Almost everything in both of my daughters books are not available for sale.
I don’t know if the schools care or look, but one should always be careful about violating copyright law.
I will be interested to see what people who have been through the process say. My daughter’s voice teacher has said for college and professional auditions she shouldn’t have anything in her book that we haven’t personally bought. So we go through the book and buy anything new before a big audition.
I would be curious to hear the answer on this from one of the song college coaches who really know
interesting - my daughter was looking for a song from a musical that she could not find in the right key at the typical online places (Sheet Music Plus, Musicnotes, etc) but, she found a free version of it online. I know some places, you can change the key when you choose to download, but it wasn’t available in what my daughter thought was the original key. I know nothing about music, so am just going by what she was telling me.
@Rooney340 Really, you should check the composer’s website and BUY the music; they work REALLY hard for their money, and not everyone is Lin-Manuel Miranda making boatloads of money off their material. My kid has even contacted the composer directly to inquire about purchase and was able to get sheet music that way.
In a different vein: Many moons ago, my kid’s coach said that it may not be a great idea to audition with super-unknown music because the audition-ers may be spending the whole time thinking, “What’s this from? Why don’t I know this? Why was it not included in the show?” or questions of that sort.
You don’t want to do material that is overdone, but you also don’t want program officials to spend your audition time scratching their heads either.
Yes to the composer’s websites. We did exactly that a couple of years ago - and sometimes, not only can you get the sheet music, but for instance at the composer’s site for one of D’s songs, we could also download (for the low price of $6!) the piano track played by the composer themselves, the way they intended it to be played. Which was so much easier and more reliable than hiring someone to play it and then hoping our phone recorded it at any sort of quality, or taking whatever you can find from pianotraxx. Then we just edited her cuts with Garage Band (the out-of-the-box music editing software on our mac).
regarding will the auditioner know where the song is from etc… remember your child will state their name and piece before they sing— so they will know. Some schools require older pieces written before 1960.
@zebracocoa is spot on. I have never heard of a college checking if the music was purchased or not. However, if you can contact the composer directly and buy it from them, please do. Most of them also have a degree they are trying to pay for - its good karma for the future! ~ VT
^^^and my D found they would transpose your cut if you ask!