Original material for audition (songwriting)

College Majors Music Major
1

In preparation for auditions that require original songs to be submitted, the question of how much “help” my D may have gotten has come up (by me!). For example, she may be stuck on the bridge of a song and take it to a teacher and get suggestions . Even at Berklee’s songwriting workshop last year, students wrote songs, got feedback from the teacher and other students and then made changes based on their suggestions. Or, what about if she goes to her bandmates with lyrics and a melody and the other band members come up with their own parts (bass, drums, a guitar solo…whatever) and they modify her original idea somewhat during the process. Would this work no longer qualify as audition material? D has been singing, playing guitar and piano for quite some time and has done a good amount of performing, but the songwriting is fairly new. However, it is one of (if not the primary) path she is considering right now. She would have no problem giving credit where credit is due (she knows she didn’t write the drum part or whatever and she would not be playing the drum part for her audition) but whether or not those songs (if even slightly modified) would still be original material and be usable in an audition is the question.

Thanks!

2

When my son downloaded his portfolio pieces, most, if not all programs asked for a short write up about each piece including his role in creating it and who performed it. So say your student wrote the melody and chord progressions of a piece, and the bassist and drummer created their own parts, they could specify it in the description. And only one of the schools he was auditioning at even allowed an original piece to be played at the audition, and they also required an additional piece which is what they asked him to start with, and then told him they didn’t need to hear more so he never even got to play his original piece. So playing original pieces for the actual audition may not even happen, although scores and recording will need to be submitted (depending on the school, my S had to submit a minimum of two, maximum of 7 original pieces for his portfolio).