I played an audition gig this last week near Chicago. This is the kind of audition I talked about in a previous post, about actors auditioning for musicals.
I’ve been accompanying auditions for around 12 years now, so I’ve done a good number of these things. I’d say my sight-reading skills are above-average, not perfect, but probably better-than-average for these kinds of gigs.
The scene is this – a theatre company calls for auditions for their next musical and in the audition notice they ask each singer to bring 16 measures of a song that represents their singing ability. An accompanist (always a pianist) will be provided. I’m that accompanist.
So people bring in their sheet music and I play the piano and they sing. Sounds very neat and tidy.
But it’s not. Singers are notorious for bringing in music in the wrong key, music photocopied poorly that cuts off the bottom of the accompaniment, pages that are torn or folded – and generally unclear music.
At this last gig I had one girl bring in a piece from a very obscure musical I didn’t know. Within the 16 measures the time signature changed four times, from 4/4 to 5/8 to 2/4 or 4/4. And there was a key change. You gotta be kidding. There’s no way I could sight read through something like that. It didn’t turn out well.
I used to get really stressed out about these gigs because of things like this for just that reason. But as I went to more and more of these, I realized that that stuff happens all the time. And I’d say without exception, it’s always the sheet music to blame.
For a few years I accompanied auditions for the West Suburban Theatre League auditions in the spring. A dozen or so theatre companies in the Chicago suburbs come together and have a big group audition. Dozens of people come to audition (on a good year). Dozens more are sitting in the audience. The dozens in the audience, at the time, were people that could potentially hire me someday, so there was some pressure to do well. Most of the auditions went well, but there were a few that just crashed.
I remember one guy. He auditioned last and seemed very nervous. He gave me his music in a binder that had an over-sized D-ring that made it very difficult to turn pages quickly. He didn’t give me the first page, just the last 4 pages that had the music he was going to sing. The music was photocopied lightly, and difficult to make out. He had scribbled out a block of 6 measures in the middle that he wanted to skip, but didn’t tell me about it. The tempo was very fast. The time signature was 9/8. The key had 5 sharps. It was a song I’d never heard of, from a musical I’d never known.
Naturally, it was a train wreck. When he was done he made a big scene to make sure everyone knew it was the pianist that had ruined it for him. Ha!
First, always include all of the pages from the song when going to an audition. Even if you’re singing the last 16 bars, it’s important to give the pianist at least the first page, because the first page has the name of the song, the composer, the tempo and any other indications of style, etc. It’s very helpful. Don’t scribble out blocks of measures. Just don’t. Cut and paste if you have to, but don’t scribble out and leave it there.
I had a girl this last week bring her music and say, “Ok, start here, then play through this part, then take the 2nd ending, skip a little bit right here, and don’t play this ending, just play, like, an ending chord or something. Ok?”
Uh? Yeah? And then, not surprisingly, it went somewhat poorly.
But here’s the thing that I really mean to talk about here – if you are a singer auditioning, just buy this book:
Auditions would go a whole lot better if people would just use something like that.
David J. Hahn
David J. Hahn is a Broadway conductor and keyboard player. He co-founded MusicianWages.com with Cameron Mizell in 2008. Visit his new project, Songwriter.fm and sign up for his songwriting newsletter.
I have played many auditions and almost every single time there is SOMEONE who has no idea about sheet music etiquette. I’ve been given old books with pages falling out, crumpled up lose leaf, songs written only for the singer so it only has the melody, and various other things. I’ve never had an actor blame me for anything (that must have been awful) and the directors usually know what happened. It’s really unfortunate when something like that happens because the actor hurts his audition by looking unprepared. :[