Tennessee All-State Audition Tips

General Tips

Presentation

  You should dress up a bit for all auditions. It shows a level of respect for what you are doing and for the judges who are listening to you. Ripped jeans, t-shirts, baseball caps, etc. do not show you at your best. At a minimum, wear a nice pair of pants or dockers and a polo style shirt. A suit may be overkill unless it helps you to feel more comfortable. Dresses or skirts are appropriate for women, but a nice shirt, blouse, or sweater with dress pants is fine as well. Your general approach to dressing for any audition should be "Sunday Best."

Warming Up

  There will usually be a location for you to warm up along with other people who are preparing for the audition. This is the time to get your horn and your brain warmed up so that you will feel ready to play at your best. Do not play in the hall outside the audition room. Blow warm air through your horn to keep it from getting cold before you go in to play.

  When you walk into the room. Introduce yourself to the judges or hand them your information sheet as appropriate for the particular situation. Then go ahead and play 1 or 2 quiet notes (a middle b-flat or f is usually good) to hear what the room sounds like and to figure out how loud you will need to play to make yourself sound your best. There is no need to ask if the judges mind if you play a few notes. They will always say that it is okay and it just takes more time if you ask first. The judges are usually in the room for several hours listening to people play and the more efficient everyone is, the happier they are. The happier the judges are, the better your score!

Scales

  Almost every audition you will take until you are in college (and often even then) will ask for scales. This shows your level of mastery on your instrument and will often show weaknesses in your playing that your prepared pieces can hide. Most people have one or two favorite scales. You know, those ones that you can play at lightning fast speeds while you are standing on your head in a cage full of lions. There is always the temptation to play your scales as fast as you possibly can. Play all of your scales at the tempo at which you can play your least comfortable scales! Do not play your B-flat major scale any faster than you could play your B major scale. That way, if you are asked for multiple scales, you will not show your weaknesses. It is far more impressive to hear a student play all of their scales at a nice comfortable tempo that shows their tone and accuracy of articulation than to hear them zoom through B-flat or F and struggle haltingly through E major.

Sight reading

  When you are sight reading, don't panic. The first thing to do is to look at the music as you would a book or magazine article. Read it down quickly, top to bottom, left to right. First notice the title or composer if there is one. That may give you some clues to style and interpretation. Then double check the tempo marking. How fast will you be playing this?

  Going in order, the clef is next. For trombone players, it is important to make sure that the example is in bass clef. As you continue on into college, you may be expected to read bass, tenor, alto, and even treble clefs. For a band oriented audition at the high school level, you will probably only need to know bass clef, but it is reasurring to see something familiar before you continue your audition.

  The next step is to look at the key signature. Is it in a key that you are familiar with? Remember all the sharps and flats that are indicated. Is the piece in major or minor tonality? Two clues for this are to look for any accidentals in the piece as well as identifying the first and/or last note. If the piece is in a major key, it may sound happier or more lively than it would if it is in a minor key and this is good to keep in mind.

  In the example above, the key could be either B-flat major or g minor. The first and last note are a g and there is a f#. In minor keys, we often see a raised 7th scale degree. This is a good clue to the tonality. This particular example is in g minor and probably should have a more sad quality to the sound than if it had been in major.

  The next thing to look at is the time signature. Is it in duple, triple, or quadruple meter? (2, 3, or 4 beats per measure) Is it in simple (2 eighth note division of the beat, ie. 2/4) or compound (3 eighth note division of the beat, ie. 6/8)?

  After this, look for any changes in the piece. Are there tempo changes? Accidentals that need to carry through the entire bar? Key signature changes? Dynamics?

  All of these elements are important and you should try to incorporate as much of this as possible into your initial reading. Of course, you may only have 15-20 seconds to look at an example, but like anything else, the more sightreading you do, the better you get at it.

  One final note about sightreading... If there is no metronome marking given, but there is a tempo indication such as Allegro or Andante, we need to look at the hardest, most difficult point in the piece. If the example begins with half notes and quarter notes and finally gets to 16ths by the last few bars, make sure to play the beginning slow enough that you will not have to slow down midway through the piece. That shows more confidence and ability in your playing than slowing down in the middle when you get to the hard parts. (See comments about scales above.)