<p>My son is considering "falling slowly" from the musical Once for his two BFA theater auditions that require 16 bars acapella. Is this a good choice?</p>
<p>My D just chose a song this week with her voice teacher for this very purpose. The advice he gave her was that uptempo is better than a ballad, avoid too many key changes and don’t have it be too range-y.</p>
<p>Wait…singing in a BFA Acting audition…what did I miss!!!</p>
<p>Bisouu, if your daughter were auditioning at a school that required her to sing, you’d know! Don’t panic! My son applied to 8 auditioned acting programs, and only one asked him to prepare a song. It was clearly stated in the audition requirements. Most acting programs do not do this, but a few do.</p>
<p>You’re doing a good job–don’t worry–breathe deep… :)</p>
<p>phew…I think i had a mini stroke…</p>
<p>I would love to know which ones require a song. Would you mind posting.</p>
<p>Yes sorry to panic you Bisouu. A few programs ask actors to sing as another way of hearing the tone and quality of their voice. And it is clearly stated in the audition requirements. My D needs it for North Carolina School of the Arts, SUNY Purchase, Juilliard and Rutgers. 16 bars acapella.</p>
<p>And e95mum. These are just the schools on my D’s list. I don’t really know all the schools that require a song.</p>
<p>UConn also did. Just another way to get to know you. It should be something you enjoy, can sing comfortably and shows off another color of your personality.</p>
<p>So does Evansville. But really there’s no need to compile a list; it’s on each school’s website.</p>
<p>e95mum, each school posts their individual requirements on their websites.
When you decide to apply to each school, carefully look at each one’s requirements. </p>
<p>For instance, some require 1 min for a monologue, others 2, others give a total of, say, 6 minutes for three. Some require a song, others don’t. Most straight auditions do not involve singing, but occasionally, they will ask for an a capella or 16 bar snippet. This is to get a sense of your vocal quality, tone, presentation. If you can’t sing, it’s ok–just choose something that is within your natural vocal range. If that’s only three notes, choose a song that has only a three note range. It doesn’t hurt to practice the song, for sure, but that is not the focus of the audition; don’t stress over it.</p>
<p>What my kids have done was to first choose the schools, then look at the requirements. This year, my S’s requirements are similar enough that he only needs one version of three monologues to ‘hit’ all his schools’ requirements, plus one song. My D, however, had different lengths in her monologue requirements, different enough that for some schools, she had to cut her monologue for a shorter version.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon asked my son to sing last year, though he might have been the only one in his group. Also Scad, but that’s a broad “performing arts” degree, not strictly acting. It wouldn’t hurt to have one in reserve.</p>
<p>Thank you for sharing the advise dramamom0804! What we heard is that the schools wants to get a sense of range outside of the normal acting voice, so he was thinking to show off his range. My S is not a trained singer. He has performed in musicals but is focused on acting in film and on stage (vs. musical theater).</p>
<p>I don’t think they mean “range” in the sense of “what notes can you hit” but “range” in the sense of “how many different types of parts can you play”.</p>
<p>No matter how many times I try to explain this, I don’t seem to be able to explain to non-MT auditioners why they might be asked to sing at their audition. So just accept this as another hoop to jump through, and choose something that isn’t too hard for you to sing.</p>
<p>The way it has been explained to me is that they want to hear the timbre of your singing voice. Apparently, the singing voice can indicate something about the potential of the speaking voice, which is what they are really interested in.</p>