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It is audition season for schools and festivals. Recently a video and an article made the rounds featuring one particular video audition this year for the YouTube Symphony by hornist David Cooper. If you have not seen it, the article is here, and the video below.
Listening to the video there are a number of points that could be made but in particular the video points at one of the elements that you need to really stand out in the crowd; the recording needs to be perfect.
Derek Wright recently had a great post on how to make an audition tape. His list has ten points, but the first one is a key one and relates strongly to the clip above. He wrote,
1. Don’t miss any notes. Period. Not even small chips are acceptable. It is likely that your tape is one among many and one person has to spend gross amounts of time going through them. Many people will stop your tape and move on to the next one once they hear any chip. Record as many takes as necessary to make a note perfect tape.
You want the recording to sound great on many levels, Derek in his article points to those clearly, but step one is being to the level that you can record and not miss anything. Because those listening will have to assume if you miss two or three or four or five notes that really is the best you can do, that on average you can’t play accurately for whatever reasons. Which may not be true but the world is a tough critic and there is no way around the fact that the first step is to hit the notes. Good luck!
