Unified question

I saw the list of schools that participate at unifieds on the website. There are not as many as I thought there would be and especially a few schools my D is interested in… Is that because like in NYC ( which is where we would go) some other schools are just going separately and not in the pearl studio location?

You only make the Unified website list if you go to ALL the unified locations and many schools don’t. You need to check individual school audition dates, who though not on the website, are still holding auditions in NYC (or other sites) at the same time. They just are not OFFICIALLY part of Unifieds.

Here is a very unofficial list of schools that showed up last year in Chicago (or were supposed to show up) - note that many schools show up that are not “official” members of Unifieds - “Unifieds” is relatively “loose” in how it is organized. Many, but not all, auditioned at the Palmer House Hilton (the ones on the Palmer House list from Sunday last year are marked with an asterisk - note that the list put out by the hotel on Sunday is sometimes not 100 percent accurate):

American Academy of Dramatic Arts*
Ball State*
Boco*
Boston University
Brandeis
Calarts*
CCM*
CMU
Coastal Carolina*
Cornish*
Dean*
DePaul
Drake*
Emerson*
Evansville*
Fordham*
Hartt*
Ithaca*
Juilliard
LIPA*
Long Island U*
Miami*
Michigan*
Minnesota/Guthrie*
Montclair*
New School*
North Carolina School of the Arts*
Northern Colorado*
Northern Ill*
NY Conservatory for Dramatic Arts*
NYU (Tisch)
Ohio Northern
Oklahoma*
Otterbein*
Pace*
Penn State*
Point Park*
Rider*
Roosevelt
Royal Scottish Academy for Music and Drama*
Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama
Rutgers
Santa Fe*
SCAD*
SMU*
SUNY Purchase*
Syracuse
TCU*
Texas State*
U Arts*
UC Irvine
UC Los Angeles
UC San Diego
University of Central Florida
University of Illinois, Chicago
University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point
USC*
Utah*
Viterbo*
Wayne State
Webster*
Western Michigan*

Thanks @EmsDad! This is incredibly helpful. We already have the hotel booked and started scheduling auditions. But this list of additional schools opens my eyes to potential other opportunities to avoid travel.

@SongnDanceMom - check with each school that you are interested in to make sure that they are going to go this year, things change from one year to the next, and, as noted, these lists are seldom 100 percent correct. Also, sometimes schools decide at the last minute to go and they don’t appear on any lists, you just see their poster in one of the audition room floor lobbies and/or some flyers scattered on the lobby tables (there are at least 3 audition floors at the Palmer House).

It is pretty crazy: you will see many students and parents scrambling around the floors each morning, crowded around the lobbies, checking for possible walk-in opportunities on the bulletin boards on each floor (and the bulletin boards will be FULL of posted notices of various kinds).

@SongnDanceMom The above list is Chicago and you mentioned NYC. As EmsDad said you should check with each school you are interested in and see if they will be in NYC on the Unified dates.

@lojosmo, actually, it was @theaterwork that mentioned NYC Unifieds in the OP.

The only list I have is for Chicago last year but I thought it might be helpful.

^oops! Time for another cup of coffee (or glass of wine!)

^ My kids call me, “Mr. Pedantic.”

I am also to assume then that there are no accompanists at the unifieds in NYC? So need to ring music on phone etc?

@theaterwork : It varies by the school at NY Unifieds as it does elsewhere - some have them, some don’t, so again, check each school’s website. Also - check carefully - although everyone says to make sure to have the music in different formats, ie on an MP3 player and a flash drive and a disc - at least school specifes “no CDs”.

I don’t think many schools bring a CD player anymore to Unifieds. While some schools do bring speakers with a patch cord (3.5mm mini plug for playback devices), to be safe, auditioners should consider bringing a playback device (i.e. phone or iPod) with speakers: either a speaker dock or speakers with a cord or bluetooth connection that your playback device can plug into or connect to via wireless.

Can anyone give advice on how best to record the music for the schools that don’t provide accompanists? Is using something simple like an iPhone to record a voice teacher’s playing good enough (she’s an excellent pianist) or should I be thinking more hi-tech than that? And/or did anyone use the pre-recorded files for some songs which are available to purchase? Or other services where you send your sheet music to someone and they record it and send you back a file?

@rampions I want to know this too…seems like before everyone said to have your accompanist or whoever play and you record it but I thought that would not be great sound quality in an iPhone which is what I’d be using… But maybe it is…I like the idea of sending the sheet music to someone to record the 32 bars you need or whatever. I don’t think you could find pre recorded tracks of the songs you need and then you’d have to edit them yourself into the cuts you need. Seems like too techy and too labor intensive. I think recording your piano seems best as long as you have all things you need beforehand since you dont want to keep calling him back to record others later! It’s all a big pain in the butt! We have never needed recorded 16/32 bar cuts before so I’ve not done it before. There has always been an accompanist at anything my D has auditioned for. Or…for community events where we needed a backtrack she’s always sang the whole song obviously so it’s never been an issue with recorded cuts!

We haven’t done this yet, and not sure we will need to, but my D’s vocal coach recommends going into a local recording studio with your accompanist, where they record the piano on a separate track. This way, your music is recorded at the perfect tempo to your singing…but the vocal track is dropped - or not recorded at all. You can record all the different cuts you might need in an hour. The students we know who have done this are glad they did, and the cost was around $100. $50 for studio time and $50 for accompanist.

Did the studio have a piano or were they using a keyboard?

Everyone I saw, including my D, used iPhones/iPods to record, and then a speaker at auditions. (Some schools had a speaker that could be used; some did not.) It worked well for D. We actually had the cuts on both her phone and mine just in case… And we always carried chargers for phones and the speaker.

My D’s vocal coach, who is extremely familiar with this process, insisted that D use a live accompianist for prescreens, so, after recording prescreens, we had the pianist record the cuts. That way, D had live accompaniment with the appropriate tempo. D did change the tempo of one song right before Unifieds, which produced a tiny bit of panic, but, amazingly, she was able to find the accompaniment in the correct tempo for this song online. (And, no, it wasn’t an overdone song. We were just lucky/blessed!)

@deelight - that is what my daughter’s voice teacher did. This way the timing, pauses, etc. were perfect. She then sent all the different cuts to my daughter. We also had her add in a few seconds at the start which gave my daughter time to start the recording and get set to sing. We didn’t need to go to a different studio, the teacher had that capability in her home studio.

This is really helpful - thanks. Thankfully both schools for which my daughter needs this require 32 bars and not 16 and the 32 happen to cover the entire songs of the 2 plus back-up third, so she doesn’t need to worry about edits - but of course the tempo is crucial. What I may do is attempt an iPhone recording at a regular voice lesson first, then play it back to see what the quality is like. If not good enough I will investigate @deelight 's suggestion - which makes sense. Realizing it is yet another thing on the “I can see I need to get to this NOW pile.”

Some alternatives to going to a recording studio with your accompanist if you don’t have a convenient one locally, they are too expensive, etc.:

  1. Send your cut to pianotrax dot com (or similar online service) and they will record it for you. These sites also have standard cuts for some songs.
  2. You can also purchase the entire accompaniment track for most audition songs for around $5.00 from pianotrax (or other service) or "rip it" from the accompaniment CD that comes with most song anthologies, and then edit it yourself by spending an hour or so learning to use Audacity* or other music editing software. Using Audacity (or similar sound editing software), you can easily cut songs, change tempo, add or subtract silence at the beginning and end, etc. There are some good video tutorials available on youtube describing how to use Audacity. This is what we did. Great results. Your student will also learn some important skills for the future. Using this approach trades time for money compared to using a studio.
  3. Purchase a digital stereo recorder, like a TASCAM DR-05 for $85 on Amazon (or a Zoom H1 for $99). Your student will be able to use it for many other recordings in the future. These devices produce excellent audio recordings. The price may be less than many studio rental fees and you acquire a very useful device for future use. We also did this and it worked very nicely.
  4. Purchase a plug-in stereo mic designed for recording music for your smartphone. Make sure that you get one that is guaranteed to work with your model phone and does a good job of recording music.
  5. You can use a conventional dynamic mic (or self-powered condensor mic) with a 3.5mm plug, but a special adapter (for around $15) is required to plug the mic in through the mini-plug headphone jack on an iPhone (it is called a 3.5 mm TRRS plug adapter for iPhone). You will also probably want to use a sound recording app to defeat the dampening imposed by Apple's automatic gain control when using external mics. This will produce a mono recording.
  6. In a pinch, you can use the built-in smartphone mic to record a decent piano track, but there are some possible issues:

a. iPhones have omnidirectional mics with automatic gain (volume) control that are very “live” and will readily pick up any background noise, such as air conditioner fan rumble or vent noise. The room needs to be very quiet.

b. Because they are omnidirectional and very “live,” iPhone mics may not produce a decent recording in a “live” room - for example, a traditional piano played in a room with a wooden floor with no carpet and high ceilings. You may get some echo in such a room using an iPhone.

c. iPhones have mono microphones with somewhat limited dynamic range and some software filtering applied. You won’t get as good a recording as you would with stereo mics and a good digital recorder, but it may be acceptable.

d. Because they have automatic gain control, you can’t control the recording volume with an iPhone (unless you use a special audio recording app with volume control, see below). Hence, you have to experiment with mic placement to get the best recording from a traditional piano, especially in rooms that are more “live.”

e. You can purchase an inexpensive audio recording app for an iPhone that will give you manual volume control and remove any filtering normally applied by Apple software. These are definitely worth the $10 or less they usually cost to improve a piano track.