<p>A great article about pre-audition tapes etc.</p>
<p>TUNEUP YOUR TRYOUT-Tips for making an effective audition recording</p>
<p>Prospective jazz students might be surprised to learn that making the perfect audition recording is about more than making the most of technological know-how, playing music or even being a good musician.</p>
<p>Many applicants take themselves out of the running from the start by making foolish mistakes that could have been avoided easily. Dont be one of them. Get into the school of your choice by learning what to do and not do from some of the people who decide who gets in and who stays out. Several basic common-sense principles apply, whether your hearts set on attending a famous conservatory or small liberal arts college, universities public or private, no matter where the institution is located across the country.</p>
<p>Heres a sampling of their invaluable advice and tips:</p>
<p>Do What Youre Asked To</p>
<p>If you think this first one sounds like a no-brainer, think again. Its amazing to hear from admissions directors, heads of jazz programs, music instructors and school bandleaders involved in the admissions process how often this simple instruction is ignored, with devastating consequences.</p>
<p>The thing that a student has to understand, one of the most important things they have to keep in mind, is that, one, do whats asked of you to do, in terms of tunes, tempos, key, etcetera, says Carl Allen, artistic director of jazz studies at the Juilliard School in New York City, which uses recordings to prescreen applicants, who then get a live audition if they make the cut. I know thats a little tough sometimes but Ive gotten tapes where people just say, Well, this was a gig I was doing recently. I was playing great on it. Im gonna send them that just to show how great I play. But none of the tunes the applicants have been asked to submit are on there. And for me, that immediately gets disqualified.</p>
<p>Quite often I have a stack of recordings to listen to on any given day. I may have 50 packages to listen to. But I guarantee that I wont have to listen to more than 38 or 40 of those. And the reason is because the other 10 or 12 have decided that theyre going to do what they want to do and disregard what weve asked them to do. When I hear that, it goes in the rejection pile. I dont even listen to the rest of it.</p>
<p>Also, be careful also how you communicate in accompanying materials. Having confidence in your abilities is one thing. But then theres shooting yourself in the foot: I had someone a couple of years ago who sent something in, and I knew that persons playing, a talented kid, but he just sent something in from a gig. And then his letter was, Yo, Carl, wazzup. Heres my package, check it out. Ill see you next year. So he was very presumptuous. I didnt even listen to it because I knew what kind of student he would be. Very talented musician, but he would not be a team player, and thats what we need in this environment.</p>
<p>Bottom Line: This is an opportunity for you as an applicant to show not only how talented you are but what kind of student youre going to be. And that comes through in how one follows instructions. And how you attend to such details could determine how successful you are later on, adds Allen, who is also an accomplished, active drummer. I always say that character is more important than talent. Because character is going to make you do the common sense things that a lot of people mess up on, like showing up on time, like being dressed appropriately, like showing manners. Its just the stuff that your mama and your grandmother talked to you about. Basic stuff, but those things really go a long way.</p>
<p>Customize Your Applications for Each School</p>
<p>Schools understand that students are probably applying to several schools (a wise approach), but give some thought to how best to present yourself in light of each institutions personality, aims and requirements (details that are usually available on their Web sites). If you want to be treated as an individual, youll have to respect that schools expect to be treated individually too, and to receive submissions that are tailor-made to them as much as possible.</p>
<p>Most schools that accept audition recordings want CDs but some will take DVDs. Others refuse to take any video. Still others may consider digital files like MP3s, while other schools will reject those entirely. Submissions of cassette tapes as a format are rare these days, but some schools will listen.</p>
<p>In many cases, schools may be looking for different types of students, and programs often also emphasize different things.</p>
<p>For instance, your recording package will be essential at CalArts−its the only way to get admitted. They dont offer live auditions. There are several reasons for that, says David Roitstein, its jazz program director who also teaches jazz piano. One is, we do so much recording at CalArts we want to make sure theyve already started recording before they come. The other is that we encourage original recordings in peoples audition portfolio and its very difficult, if not impossible, to demonstrate original compositions in a live audition. What we ask for is four tracks: two that are contrasting jazz standards so we can see how someone plays over chord changes and form and melodic development and harmonic knowledge and all that. But what we really want to focus on are two other tracks of their choice, and they can include anything they want, any instrumentation, any style. What we say are original compositions are encouraged but not required.</p>
<p>The two things we do a lot of at CalArts during the year are composing and recording, so thats why we do our portfolio like we do. What were focusing on is someones originality and creativity, not only their technical proficiency on an instrument. We feel that original composition is whats going to move the music forward.</p>
<p>On another hand, Mike Davison, director of jazz studies at the University of Richmond, who also teaches and plays trumpet, has been approached by quite a number of prospective music students who have a vague idea theyd like to play jazz, but not exactly a clear idea of what that entails. And they may have other academic interests besides music, but that doesnt mean they dont have jazz potential. I might get a trumpeter who says hes interested in jazz and plays classical pieces. I got one this year. He got a full ride in physics and came here to study with me. He got accepted everywherethe Ivy Leaguesbut he came because he wanted a good trumpet foundation too. He didnt really play jazz but he understands the horn, he has a great sound, a great sense of rhythm, and hes a great kid.</p>
<p>The school doesnt offer a jazz degree and participants in its jazz program can be non-music majors. But whether majors or not, musicians there have to be dedicated and capable. I played 70 gigs with my top combo last year and we go to Australia and perform every day for two weeks on an island in the Great Barrier Reef. And theres where the learning really takes place, says Davison. So I have to have a certain kind of person.</p>
<p>So before recording a note, sort out the schools that especially appeal to you. To prepare to apply to schools, and to get your head geared into the specifics of the process, get started earlyin your junior year wouldnt hurt, suggests Allen. Give yourself a summer or fall break project: Pick four or five schools you think youd be interested in attending, go to their Web sites and start preparing to meet their various requirements. This should do wonders when you eventually apply, and getting used to the rigors of different tunes and challenges should reap benefits. At the very least, this will give you discipline and experience you wouldnt have otherwise, and could make you a stronger candidate.</p>
<p>Carefully Consider Your Presentation</p>
<p>So how do you create an effective package? What goes into producing a good recording?</p>
<p>Once youve figured out each schools requirements as far as the content of your submissions, whether you get to choose the pieces you perform, or they do, you can give some thought to how to produce your CD. But before you leap in to record, carefully consider your repertoire and how best to present yourself. Play to your strengths. Many of those surveyed stressed offering selections of varied, contrasting types of tunes, and styles, with different tempos and keys. In any case, make sure everything doesnt sound the same. How much do you want or need to solo? How much should you include other players? Improvisation? And dont just take a school concert or a gig and automatically send it off to everyone on your list. Consider whether those offerings would show you off to best advantage. Perhaps you would be better served by getting your own players together, selecting all the music yourself, and making sure your playing is featured?</p>
<p>Then, the big question is, do you go to a professional studio or someone who has enough recording equipment or do it yourself?</p>
<p>Think, and think again. Dont be tempted to dash something off.</p>
<p>A lot depends on the choices you make, says Dan Greenblatt, director of academic affairs at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City, which allows students to submit recordings or audition live, but requires pre-screenings via recording for applicants for guitar, voice and drums (due to the sheer volume of those applications). The advantage students have is that theyre choosing the tunes, theyre choosing the rhythm section and theyre choosing the studio or wherever theyre doing the recording. So they want to make a series of choices thats going to make them sound like they know some music. So part of that is prepare your music, know your tunes. If you know Blue Bossa and youve played it a bunch of times before, why not do that instead of trying to sound like you could play something harder that you really cant play? Thats a mistake that a lot of people make. Or they wanted a fast tune so lets take this really fast. Uptempo is a relative thing, so maybe something thats medium/up can sound really hip instead of something thats really fast but is falling apart.</p>
<p>As for accompaniment, If you have access to really competent musicians who can create a relaxed, confident sound, this is the time to pull those strings because there could be thousands of dollars [of potential scholarship money, which is awarded on merit] riding on this. The thing thats important to remember, and it puts a lot of pressure on the student, is that the difference between getting no scholarship and getting a full scholarship is $100,000-something dollars. So if youre trying to figure out if its worthwhile to pay the good piano player you took a lesson from but dont play with regularly, who wants a hundred bucks a session to record your three tunes, this is the time to spend the hundred bucks.</p>
<p>Since scholarships are based on merit, even if they dont get a full scholarship, prospective students can be awarded partial but very considerable amounts. So making an excellent studio recording, the best you can produce, can really pay off, adds Greenblatt. Youre talking about 15 minutes of music here, three tunes, so if you really take the time to prepare them and do your rehearsing first you can do this in an hour in a studio. Its not like making a CD. Youre talking about laying down a blues and a ballad and a medium/uptempo standard. So you can go in and in a maximum of moderately priced studio time get yourself a pretty good thing. It should cost you maximum $500 to do this. And if youve been around the community at all, you can do it for a lot less because theres somebody you know whos willing to donate something, for a talented kid: He can come into my studio and well do it for $50 an hour, and Ill throw an hour of mixing and sweeten it up, or whatever. And then his teacher says, Ill come in and lay down some tracks and you dont have to pay me. So youve put it down to $250 or something like that.</p>
<p>If youre a pretty good player and you know three or four tunes and you can play OK and youve been in your high school band and you have $500, you can make a very nice-sounding 10- to 15-minute demo. You can get a nice drummer in there and a nice piano player, be in a studio and get some separation and youre done.</p>
<p>Juilliards Allen has found that many students can make a decent entry on their own. A lot of students quite often are a little concerned about the cost and they think, I have to go into a studio and I have to get the best studio with the best engineer. Well, thats not necessary. You want something thats clear, thats easy for people to be able to listen to and that can just sometimes be in a practice room, in a living room, somewhere where theres not too much sound bouncing off the walls. It doesnt have to be the most expensive studio. But it should be a studio-quality recording, as opposed to a live performance. Because, then, there are so many other distractions you have to try to sift through as youre listening and you dont want things to be distracting and you dont want the listener to be distracted. You want them to be drawn in to whatever it is you are presenting.</p>
<p>Paul DeMarinis, director of jazz studies and associate professor of music at Webster University in Webster Groves, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis, feels, It doesnt have to be state-of-the-art studio quality. But it has to be professional-sounding enough that it makes the auditioner want to get to the next track. If it sounds like it was recorded in a gymnasium or something where theres way too much reverb and theres not separation of instruments, it doesnt serve the student terribly well. It should have a decent sound to it that makes listening to it interesting. Sometimes a student will go into a recording studio, either a full-fledged recording studio or, more frequently, they know somebody who has enough equipment at home to do some kind of reasonable recording, and usually the results are not too bad. Theyre functional, enough to give us a sense of what the skills of the person auditioning really are.</p>
<p>Although its important to present something that sounds good, its probably not worth it for a student to spend thousands of dollars trying to produce some kind of CD-quality recording. Thats not the most important thing, adds Doug Bickel, director of piano at the Frost School of Music, University of Miami. Everybody can get a video camera and can send us a good-looking DVD and things like that. Ive taken students where the sound quality isnt very good but if they can play I can teach them to produce records. Were looking for innate musical ability: Is this someone we feel that we could mold and that we could teach the things needed to become a good musician or is this someone who sounds like theyre certainly trying hard but they dont sound like somebody who might eventually develop into a good musician?</p>
<p>However you do your recording, make sure you are featured. If youre sending in a group and everybody else has several solos, and you have only one, that could be a problem. This is your one shot to shine and the spotlight should be on you.</p>
<p>Send Supplementary Information</p>
<p>Students dont provide enough information with their recordings, says Alex Stewart, director of the jazz studies program and associate professor of jazz studies/ethnomusicology at the University of Vermont, who is also author of a comprehensive study of big bands, Making the Scene: Contemporary New York City Big Bands. (2007). Ive even gotten recordings where they didnt even say what instrument they play. You can figure it out usually, because you can look back at their application, but all the information should be right there at hand.</p>
<p>This sax player suggests sending in a fact sheet that should contain all the information that you would get with a professional CD: your name and instrument, the date recorded and where, the names of all the musicians and their instruments, the names of the tracks and the times of each. Also, if you are sending in something from a school concert where theres a large ensemble playing for six minutes and you have a short solo in there somewhere, indicate where that solo is. For example, say At 3 minutes and 53 seconds in I take a solo playing saxophone.</p>
<p>All of that is very helpful because we get a lot of this stuff and were trying to listen to it all as efficiently as possible. So when we have to waste a lot of time it kind of puts us in a bad mood. I try to give a fair listen as long as I can do it efficiently. If I cant do it efficiently and I have a big stack of submissions, then I may just go on to the next one.</p>
<p>As for the recording itself, Stewart cautions, Editing thats in the form of remixing or altering the way they sound, thats not really cool. I dont want to hear something thats been manipulated in the studio to make them sound better than they are.</p>
<p>Audition In-Person If Possible</p>
<p>Live auditions are always preferable, no matter how short, Richard Smith, professor of studio/jazz guitar at the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, noted in an e-mail. USC is one of the schools that do accept DVD submissions, but, he cautioned, if you are going to go that route, Be sure the DVD is delivered in a standard format and ready to drop into a DVD player. Many submissions are hard to view because of formatting problems and variations. And, as with a live audition, Dress matters: business or even what the applicant perceives as hip as long as it is some form of dress-up attire.</p>
<p>Michael A. Tracy, director of the Jamey Aebersold Jazz Studies Program and a saxophonist and professor at the University of Louisville School of Music, also votes in favor of performing live. But, he responded, While it is always best to audition in person, a good audition CD can certainly be a useful substitute, especially when a prospective student cannot make an audition due to distance or a previous commitment.</p>
<p>The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music doesnt require live auditions (except for vocalists who make the cut after submitting their pre-screening recording). But, says Teri Lucas, the schools director of admissions, in a live situation, You have more of a chance to interact with the auditors, who may ask you to respond on-the-spot to something that can show more of your abilities. More students who understand that scholarship consideration is tied to their audition want to come live because they want to be able to have that interaction, and even though it is a little more nerve-wracking and youre playing with students you dont know (the school provides a rhythm section), if youre also a strong player in particular, you also have that chance to show who you are, she adds.</p>
<p>One school where you wont be given the option to audition by recording is Berklee, which has fully instituted a relatively new policy requiring all applicants to audition in personand it doesnt matter where in the world you live. To accomplish this, they host an ambitious schedule of auditions at many international locations, as well as at their headquarters in Boston, and also hold regional auditions in various cities around the U.S. They are conducting concentrated talent searches in added locations as well, most recently focusing on Accra, Ghana, and Durban, South Africa, reaching prospective students whove traveled to those spots from all over Africa and who might not otherwise be heard.</p>
<p>We really want to have as holistic an approach as we possibly can in how we select our students, says Damien Bracken, dean of admissions for Berklee College of Music, who says the college now exceeds 6,000 auditions and interviews per year. We feel that audition tapes only give you one very narrow view of what that student is about, and we feel that engaging with the student, meeting with that student, having them play for us, interviewing them about what their goals and objectives are, why theyre choosing Berklee versus another college, gives us an opportunity to understand the students fit to Berklee and how well they understand how Berklee is different.</p>
<p>We want to be in the room with you and we want to hear what you do best.</p>
<p>Remember to Relax</p>
<p>When it comes to auditioning, whether live or by laying tracks, Relax, were just trying to get a snapshot of where youre at, says the University of Miamis Doug Bickel. Dont worry so much. I know its easy to say and its hard to do. But music is an accumulated skill. Its something you get a little better at every day. So youre not going to get any better because you worry or you practiced a lot the night before. You cant cram for music.</p>