<p>My son is getting ready to complete his junior year in high school and is planning to major in vocal performance in college. He has put together his target lists of schools to find out their various audition and prescreening requirements.</p>
<p>My question to all of you is how have you handled the recording of these prescreening DVDs. In reviewing the forums and talking to people, it seems to have run the gammet from recording with a video camera in the home to spending money on a professional recording at a studio.</p>
<p>Thank you for your responses.</p>
<p>I used a recording studio, although friends of mine had success recording themselves in concert halls/churches, etc. One friend used recordings of her performances at summer programs as well. I found a studio very easy to use because it’s less involved than doing it yourself, but it is quite expensive. I think it’s just a matter of your preference.</p>
<p>We have done this for Voice and for instrumental.
We have made recordings various ways, including at home with a video camera. Really, for pre-screening purposes, if you are sending to MSM or some such place, I would spend money and make good quality recordings, probably this means using a nice studio (take time to find the right one) - Voice is competitive plus you may need several different DVDs or CDs depending on rep requirements of where your son applies. Making multiple copies of a CD with various tracks, some of which go on one and some of which go on another, with some overlap, takes time. Do you have the means to produce and label CDs and DVDs - again, time. If you use a studio, the engineer needs to understand they can’t tweak any recording as this is not rock ‘n’ roll (I’m not sure of the technical term), so I would use a place that has a background with classical musicians AND there needs to be a decent piano. I would take some care to find a good studio AND you will need to bring and pay an accompanist, who needs to be good. Your son should be comfortable and confident in this accompanist and have rehearsed ahead of time with this person. In some areas good accompanists are VERY busy and need to be booked well ahead.</p>
<p>Check with his voice teacher. He or she may have good recording equipment or access to it. In our case, we did the audio with her good equipment, while I took video with our portable handy-cam. Then, a capable college student (our son) merged the good quality audio with the video using Final Cut. He could also make several versions, as some schools needed certain pieces in a particular order. So, our costs were just materials, the voice teacher’s time and the accompanist’s time. DS owed us… 
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<p>For voice, I don’t believe the quality will be good enough using only the built-in mic on the camera. Someone will probably post a link for you to posts here that deal with mics.</p>
<p>If S is involved with church singing, or your family is involved with a church or temple, often these make excellent places for recordings.</p>