Amy - we have chatted - but my daughter gets the award for the most stressful submission - like under the wire with me having a heart attack. I appreciate SpartanDrew bringing it to our attention - but sometimes ignorance is bliss :-).
So - I should write a book about how difficult the process was - or at least my daughter can be the poster child for not waiting until the last minute. Here’s the saga (let’s hope no judges read this 
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My daughter (jazz bassist, senior) has been playing on many tapes in the last weeks. She didn’t schedule her session until Wed. (sounds not too bad, huh?). She played on about 7 other musician tapes including one marathon session that went on for 7 hours (bassists are in demand I’m sure the jazz judges will be tired of seeing her on every other tape!
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Wed. comes and her pianist and drummer can’t stay past an hour. Our daughter is a perfectionist so she wasn’t happy with the takes and called me in tears. So - super mamma texts her other super mamma jazz friends who knows a pianist who happens to live in LA. (yup - never underestimate the power of a mom network) Somehow the God’s alligned and I talked to the pianist (YA finalist from a few years ago) on Thursday and has an hour in-between class and a plane for a gig. ONE HOUR. And that’s in 2 hours.
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So - I get my daughter (who is recovering from the flu in bed and likely exhaustion from playing on all those YA tapes) out the door and headed toward the college where said pianist is - pianist also called his drummer pal who gets in the car. All this was difficult because our daughter’s phone was broken so I’m DMing her on Facebook over the Internet.
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The time arrives and no daughter. Turns out that she put the wrong address in her phone and ended up in Long Beach (for those that know LA - that’s not good). But, alas the traffic God’s were feeling good that day, and drummer was late anyway - so headed toward the right spot. BUT (if you have teens you know where this is headed)…she has next to no gas. She texts me that 3 miles out her car is sputtering…she says she’s not a praying type of person, but she prayed as her car sputtered into the parking garage and she got her bass out and headed to the practice/recording room.
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She records 3 tunes - is on Cloud 9 (very good musicians) - they even know and play with her instructor and say she sounds like her (which really lifted her spirits). Oh - BTW, IF she had asked her instructor a week or two ago - this could have been an easy connection - but no - isn’t it much more exciting to get your mom to find a mom in NJ who happens to kind of know someone in LA? Seriously folks!
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So - she goes to the local gas station to put gas in a water bottle to get her car out of the garage. (I kid you not).
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To help her along, the drummer and the pianist recorded the audio and the video separately (basses are usually hard to hear) because she forgot her patch cord for her amp. But no worries - it’s covered mom! The drummer even brought a mic to mic her bass. All is looking good, right??? The plot thickens.
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We wait for said pianist to land so he can send the videos to download. We are 24 hours away from the deadline - no worries, right??? Well - we wait and we wait. We line up a guy in LA to merge the video and the audio. We wait and we wait - and we wait. Then at 10pm we get a message. Sorry - the audio won’t download but here’s the regular video. Daughter can’t download the video on her computer - so I download it. You can’t hear the bass. Pianist said it was “passable”. Not really. I try to show my daughter the videos on Facetime. I DM my mom friends. They agree that we should try and get the better quality audio tapes.
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Next day - Friday (due day) - get a message from the pianist - drummer finally figured out how to extract the audio tapes. He agrees to merge the two - but he can’t do it until 3:15pm. OK - we still have time.
4pm on due day. Pianist texts me that the merged tapes are done - but he doesn’t have Internet (where was he staying, under a bridge? (maybe - he is a musician after all so I know how that is), so he said he will email them to me when he gets to his gig at 5:30pm. 5:30pm comes and goes…then 6pm. I’m getting a little nervous.
6:30pm - he finally answers and says that they are on their way to xxx@gmail.com. That’s not my email!!! (it was the guy from last night that was going to merge them - but I told him nevermind - send them to me but he must not have remembered). So - he sends me a low quality videos which I proceed to show to my daughter in LA. He begins the high quality video downloads which will take an hour.
6:30pm on due day: Daughter HATES - I mean, HATES the Ballad. Said that she had no chance of not getting laughed at with that Ballad. OMG. It’s 7:30pm at this point. Luckily I had already downloaded her other 2 tunes.
7:30pm Daughter proceeds to call her high school ensemble that she recorded with - and gets another take of the Ballad. Only problem is that it’s too large a file and it cuts off before the end.
8pm So - she tried to get the high quality one from her HS pianist. He doesn’t answer. Then - he finally does - and he can’t figure out how to send a file that large. I offered my Dropbox. No dice.
8:30pm (3o minutes from the deadline) - daughter hems and haws on which ballad to use. Finally decides she likes the high school one - but it cuts off. Can’t possibly use that one. So - I make an excutive decision to use the one she doesn’t like.
8:45. (15 minutes to go) HS Pianists mom tells my daughter (who doesn’t tell me) that she is going to download the high quality one (with an ending) directly to her YA application. (I didn’t know this was happening).
8:58 (one minute to go!) - I finally get the old version to download and I go to press the “submit” button. Guess what? It won’t submit. Says that there is a video downloading (remember the other mom who is trying to help) and it won’t submit.
9:00 (deadline) Daughter is on the phone in tears. I call the other mom (try not to yell - she was just trying to help) who says - well, it’s almost downloaded.
9:11 - I can finally press submit button. Daughter cries - I contain myself (look at all the time I put into this!!) and call it a day. I tell her it’s a very painful lesson learned. She reminds me how much time she put into it…ughh.
However - voila! Confirmation comes - they charge our credit card. We heard through a finalist - that as long as you are downloading at the deadline - it’s OK (thank goodness!).
(lessons learned in next post)
