<p>Thanks Allmusic for your reply! It would be interesting to hear more (in simple language if possible, for the nontechnologically oriented like myself who will read this) about ethical issues related to sound editing.</p>
<p>rigaudon, you make a very valid point, and I’m far from technically astute enough to clarify if the terms quoted bend, stretch or break the envelope in terms of what constitutes an “undoctored” recording.</p>
<p>From a layman’s standpoint, multiple microphone placement would fall within the normally acceptable standards. “Mixing”, and “compression” may well be within the parameters of normal setup and adjustment on professional grade recording equipment. “… a little bit of reverb” in my thinking begins to stretch (if not break) the envelope of an “unedited” or “enhanced” audition or supplemental recorded submission.</p>
<p>It would be interesting to hear the opinions of the admissions professionals as well as the technically savvy regarding clarification. </p>
<p>SteveM, please do not take this as criticism, as it is by no means intended as such. It’s just a layman’s confusion over the technology, definition and accepted professional standards as to what is defined as unedited.</p>
<p>We’ve broached the topic before. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/504034-ethicist-april-27-ny-times-modifying-recordings-college-apps.html?highlight=recordings[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/504034-ethicist-april-27-ny-times-modifying-recordings-college-apps.html?highlight=recordings</a></p>
<p>I for one feel the need for it to revisit the discussion when the subject is broached.</p>
<p>Thanks again Binx, Violadad, Allmusic and others.</p>
<p>What a great resource this place is. But sorry for the Y**Tube link, and I can understand why it is frowned upon. Sadly, not a good place overall for demonstrating how well the human race has evolved. :(</p>
<p>Good point on the electronic piano. Matt does have a Steinway grand at his US boarding school to play, and only when he comes home to Hong Kong that he makes do with the Clavinova. He does find it inferior to the Steinway to play, but much better than many uprights and similar pianos he has come across. Matt by the way has decided to major in composition, with his piano performance as support. He will certainly try and remember to show his interest (not really love) for classical music too.</p>
<p>On the video enhancement topic, I can see why reverb and other touches would not be allowed. But if very careful, it can, along with a little compression, make a recording sound more natural. No point in going silly with effects though.</p>
<p>On the copyright music front, we are still waiting for replies from a couple of places, and expect it may take a very long time. But Matt has pushed and decided to risk an upload or two under the ‘fair use’ argument. Maybe technically illegal, but rules are made to be broken sometimes. Read recently about the iPhone iSteam application developer who hacked into the iPhone system to run his iSteam at first. It was illegal, but Apple didn’t send their lawyers around. They called the guy and asked him to join their approved third-party developers and now the guy has given up his day-job. Good example of a wise corporate move. I am sure Warner Brothers are also nice guys for real. You can find Matt’s illegal demo on that banned site we talked about. :)</p>
<p>Thanks again all.
Richard
Hong Kong</p>
<p>To separate the wheat from the chaff, you have to consider motives along with techniques. There are probably many more than these, but two of the possible ideals to which recording engineers can strive and which serve to illustrate the current point are:</p>
<p>1) Considering the recording as documentation of a live event with the objective being to reproduce as closely as possible what happened, such that a listener at a different place and/or time experiences the event in as similar as possible a manner to those who attended the event.</p>
<p>2) Considering listening to the recording an event in and of itself with the objective being to give the listener the best possible experience, ideally one that is better than listening to the original live event.</p>
<p>The use of multiple microphones later mixed to two tracks, compression and even added reverb can arguably be used toward either of these goals, depending on what is being recorded, the venue, the particular equipment used and the parameters and techniques used by the recording engineer. Since it is not always easy to determine motives by listening to the recording, sometimes the only way to prevent getting #2 when what you want is #1 (and I will put violadad on his honor not to swing at that hanging breaking ball,) is to ban all but the simplest and most straightforward of recording techniques. While that may, ironically, result in a recording that sounds a bit less like the live experience than it might have, it will generally assure that any differences will not give the listener unreasonably high expectations concerning the talent of the performer in cases where the real credit should go to the recording engineer and post-production team.</p>
<p>BassDad, as tempting as it is, when the don’t swing sign is flashed, I can take a pitch. </p>
<p>But never two in a row. :D</p>
<p>RichardHK - You’ll need, as suggested above, to give any given school prescreen materials in the format they specify. That said, you can give yourself some options. I’ll tell you how we did it for my D, a vocalist. She got invited to audition at each school to which she applied so we must have done something right.</p>
<ul>
<li>I recorded her in a small church with a three mic setup feeding through a mixer into a Canon SDHC camcorder (which does have a mic port).<br></li>
<li>We recorded material specifically for the NFAA competition, but the songs required fit the styles her potential schools were asking for.</li>
<li>I ripped the audio from the video files and used these to individually create CDs tailored to the prescreen requrements of each school using Windows Media Player.</li>
</ul>
<p>While none of the schools requested a DVD, I could have easily created one with the Magix software I was using for video editing.</p>
<p>It can be a hectic process but, truth be told, I actually enjoyed the project and felt like we must have done a good job, given her success. Good luck to you.</p>
<p>Thanks Don and all,</p>
<p>Sadly (for me) I will not be with Matthew when he needs to compile most of his materials. He goes back to an MA boarding school in September, which is too soon to complete everything. His teachers are not new to recording stuff, so trust they can do a good job. My contribution until then will be a few more YouTube videos, plus some CD recordings.</p>
<p>Your church recording ‘sounds’ good. I bet you didn’t need to worry about reverb. And yet, some could argue you were adding effects!! :)</p>
<p>Good luck to you and your D in future. A music career is something I would have loved, but alas have to pass on to S. I look forward to seeing how he gets on out there in the big wide world.</p>
<p>Richard
Hong Kong</p>
<p>It’s funny you ask about the reverb. I put one mic on the piano, which I’d placed about 15 feet away from her, and two on a stand about 3 feet in front of her. That setup definitely picked up some echo from the room and I did worry that someone would think I’d sweetened the recording a bit. I ended up including the name of the venue on the CD insert and hoped those listening would would just take it for what it was.</p>
<p>Thanks for the kind wishes and I extend the same for Matthew.</p>
<p>Hi everyone,</p>
<p>I’ve gone and re-read this thread and the earlier threads several times in the last month or so, and it’s been very helpful. </p>
<p>We’re going to take the plunge this year and manage our entire application online. To do so, we’re going to use a technology provider that’s very experienced with this process from an art school prospective. They’re called SlideRoom:
[SlideRoom[/url</a>]</p>
<p>We’ll still allow submission of media in any format (MP3, MP4, various flash/quicktime/DIVX video files, etc.) for prescreening purposes, and then require a video file in lieu of a live audition (we have a lot of applicants from Europe and Asia who don’t travel to the US for a live audition). </p>
<p>The downside to this is we’re going to have to charge an application fee. Previously, people paid just the $50 to apply to Bard College, and then our supplemental app didn’t cost them extra (as opposed to the fees many double degree programs charge just to look at your application). But there’s no way around that now. </p>
<p>There’s another promising company out there called ArtsApp:
[url=<a href=“http://artsapp.com/]ArtsApp”>http://artsapp.com/]ArtsApp</a> > Home](<a href=“http://slideroom.com/]SlideRoom[/url”>http://slideroom.com/)</p>
<p>CCM has used them, but only to manage their prescreening materials, and Juilliard has also used them to screen some summer programs. But we’re going “all in” with SlideRoom, and they will be our sole application portal. I think ArtsApp still has some technical issues to work through–SlideRoom is much more mature–but I hope the Unified App people will follow CCM and start using ArtsApp or a similar company soon, so there’s an overall upgrade to the whole process. </p>
<p>I’m confident the time has come to get rid of the rush to FedEx, the unplayable CDs and DVDs, and the huge amounts of clutter and waste the process currently creates (dumping crates of DVDs and CDs each year–does anyone know whether it’s possible to recycle these things?). If you can burn a file to a CD or DVD, you can upload to a website. </p>
<p>There will still be a paper trail on our end, and I have zero concerns regarding privacy and data storage/transfer–in fact, I think less things will get lost in internetland than currently vanish in the postal system. </p>
<p>Finally, we’re going to pare down our prescreening requirements. We’re happy with the quality of applicants so far (but never quantity…that’s the mirage in the desert!), but after reading through these threads and examining the investment required just to apply to 5-6 music schools, user-friendly is the way to go. </p>
<p>Currently we ask for more than other schools, and we’ll simplify that (as we generally spend ~3 minutes on each recording anyway…). So for violin, we’ll just ask for a concerto movement, one movement of Bach, and a work of choice, so the same Juilliard or CIM tape can be used for us.</p>
<p>Fingers crossed!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not much help, I know, but in Germany, all the country roads are lined with CDs dangling from trees. Apparently they catch headlights and scare away the deer - not so many traffic accidents due to deer running out on the road.</p>
<p>No idea how well it works, but it looks pretty.</p>
<p>Good luck with the application change. I’m glad to be done with arts applications; all the technology is way over my head these days. I am guessing the application fee won’t be a huge deterrent. Once we have shelled out for flights, hotels, lessons, etc, a few bucks for an application is less of a shock. Back in the dark ages when my oldest two were applying, all the application fees seemed pretty hefty anyway. Didn’t stop us. Hopefully, you will only lose those who are less serious about it.</p>
<p>N8ma, just to give you some feedback – it sounds as though you’ve sought to give applicants a great deal of flexibility and streamline your process. It seems like an excellent option for pre-screening purposes and those unable to audition live.
That said, as a parent of a SOM student, I do have reservations about replacing live auditions with canned versions entirely. Anyone prepared to spend the equivalent of a small (or large, in some areas) house in order to send their student to a possible performing arts dream school is no doubt heavily invested – and sufficiently invested to want their student to directly experience the environment and the humans who distinguish the institution. The audition itself does not just serve the institution in selection. It also serves the student in his or her selection, development of a sense of fit, and often, the opportunity for a sample lesson. </p>
<p>There is also the presence and chemistry of live performance to consider. A reasonably talented musician can, after 20 takes, get through an audition piece. A very talented musician will do so in the audition, the first time, under pressure, and will at the same time emotionally connect the audience/adjudicators. </p>
<p>I fear this approach, while abundantly pragmatic, could minimize the “je ne sais quois” factor that highly trained and ergo intuitive adjudicators brings to the audition. It also could minimize the actual performance capacity of the student. More importantly, relying on digital files and the production capabilities of inexperienced or economically disadvantaged students may not present an accurate “aural” representation. I suspect you and your staff have debated these issues at length, and I will be curious to hear how it goes.</p>
<p>I guess as a parent my preference would be that a live audition always be an option, or that final auditions be conducted remotely in real time. Just my .02.</p>
<p>Kind regards.</p>
<p>kmccrindle,</p>
<p>My reading of N8Ma’s note was that the video final audition was an option for some applicants, not a requirement for all, but I am sure a clarification will be forthcoming from the source.</p>
<p>whoops!</p>
<p>I meant any file type for prescreening, and then IF an applicant from overseas applies to Bard, we will require a video file from them in lieu of a live audition, if travel to the US presents financial or other difficulty. There have also been cases whereby someone in the USA cannot make our audition date for whatever reason, and we allow a taped audition as well. But that’s the exception rather than the rule (and we’re not prejudiced either way–we’ve accepted students strictly from a DVD, and they’ve come to Bard having never visited the campus before, and they turn out just fine). </p>
<p>Live auditions are essential. </p>
<p>And in the case of folks applying by DVD, very often it’s the result of a series of trips we take in the fall to various countries, and so there’s an initial face-to-face musical encounter, and then we encourage the individual to apply. (For instance, we go to Budapest and 30 kids will play for us, and we videotape the whole thing. Then we write, say, 15 of those 30 to express our interest and 10 of those 15 apply). So even with the DVD applications, there’s a little more human contact, and it’s not just transactional.</p>
<p>Awesome. Thanks for clearing that up and sorry if I misread. I was getting a little Brave New World vibe there for a moment ;)</p>
<p>PS I should add that my reading of it was likely filtered by some completely unrelated but recent shocking events in my school district that seem too ludicrous to be true:
They are attempting to replace 4 core courses daily with “online” (private enterprise, inferior products specifically) instruction each day, led by "parapros’ in rooms with 100 kids at computers (and this district’s IT infrastructure is woefully lacking), wiping out music except at a single “hub” school as an after hours course (meaning kids have to pick between music CREDIT and sports, for example, in essence, dismantling the program, particularly the capability for wind and symphony levels of instruction) and other things I never thought possible.
Of course, even more ludicrous for this urban district is the fact that they’d be plopping grade niners in front of computers to “learn” subjects such as math while fewer than 1/3rd of entering students presently meet literacy standards in the state (so, they’ll be robbed of the one avenue of instruction they can access, which is aural, since online learning favors visual scanners, which most illiterate and usually dyslexic students lack…). So, double deficit there.</p>