Auditioning for Musicals
Tue, 21 Oct 2003, 09:00 pmSteveW18 posts in thread
Auditioning for Musicals
Tue, 21 Oct 2003, 09:00 pmIts been a long ambition of mine to perform in musicals, but only very recently one I have tried to act upon. However, I have no idea where to start. I have recently started singing lessons for the first time in my life, and have discovered that I cover the following musical range - lower C to upper G (over 3 octives
Im a young 32year old living in St Kilda.
Cheers
Im a young 32year old living in St Kilda.
Cheers
Re: Auditioning for Musicals - choose what's right for YOU
Wed, 29 Oct 2003, 01:37 pmTalissa wrote:
>
> Okay, well it's generally best to stick to musical theatre.
You need to find out from whoever's running the audition what their requirements are. Sometimes they'll have specific asks...like for 'Living In The 70's" I was specifically asked to prepare 'Stairway to Heaven' and then 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. Sometimes they will give strong guidelines...for 'South Pacific' they wanted you to sing something from any Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.
But for 'The Lion King' audition in Perth, they specifically said "NO songs from the show or ANY other musicals." I heard (or was it a rumour?) that someone had gone in and started with "Somewhere, over the rain..." and got cut off with a "..Thank you."
When our group of 20 was herded into the audition warm-up room, I heard about six Elton John songs being prepared, two of which were the same...!
For the record, this is what I did. I generally hate giving sheet music to an accompanist - unless it's a familiar song they're going to know well, they usually fudge through the tempo and feel of it (as best they can under the circumstances, but it doesn't help me give my undivided attention to the song). I'd rather bring someone along who can play it the way I rehearsed it, sing to a tape backing, sing a capella, or accompany myself. I took my guitar and sang a jazzy version of 'Sitting on the Dock of the Bay'...cutting the song to the best bits that show off my range (like they do on Australian Idol) and singing the instrumental 'whistling' bit in a falsetto...I heard later that that was possibly what made my effort stand out as being suitable for the 'Timon' character I was called back for.
I was asked to take some sheet music from the show and come back in a few minutes to do a specific number. This is possibly where my preparation fell down; I wasn't very familiar with any songs from the show, and I'm not actually that good at following sheet music. Luckily I was left in a room with a piano and I knew enough to figure out the basics. When I showed up again, I kinda stumbled through it...and fortunately, so did the accompanist, who wasn't familiar with it either (this time it worked in my favour!). So we got halfway through again and then they'd heard enough. They were really just looking at how I handled singing & speaking in a character voice, they'd already figured out I could sing. For the next callbacks I had to know that song backwards, but by then I'd had heaps of time to prepare.
I haven't been watching it that much, but the 'Australian Idol' show gave a lot of good clues about what material (and attitude) works and doesn't work for an audition. You need to know what the end product is and what kind of thing the judges will be looking for. Some songs are just not going to be appropriate; others may have been done to death. But even a well-worn song can be presented in a stunning and/or original way. Basically you have to choose songs that are good for you, that you sing well, and can impress with. (You also have to seem like someone future employers would want to work with.) That's all such a highly individual thing; you can listen to so much advice from others but the final decisions can only be yours. What seems amazing (and encouraging) from watching the Aust Idol try-outs was how many people went in there making really BAD decisions. Your main job in preparing your audition is to work out what the right ones are for you. Then you work on polishing your act...but if you've made the right choices, that part should be fun and easy.
Cheers,
Craig
[%sig%]
>
> Okay, well it's generally best to stick to musical theatre.
You need to find out from whoever's running the audition what their requirements are. Sometimes they'll have specific asks...like for 'Living In The 70's" I was specifically asked to prepare 'Stairway to Heaven' and then 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. Sometimes they will give strong guidelines...for 'South Pacific' they wanted you to sing something from any Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.
But for 'The Lion King' audition in Perth, they specifically said "NO songs from the show or ANY other musicals." I heard (or was it a rumour?) that someone had gone in and started with "Somewhere, over the rain..." and got cut off with a "..Thank you."
When our group of 20 was herded into the audition warm-up room, I heard about six Elton John songs being prepared, two of which were the same...!
For the record, this is what I did. I generally hate giving sheet music to an accompanist - unless it's a familiar song they're going to know well, they usually fudge through the tempo and feel of it (as best they can under the circumstances, but it doesn't help me give my undivided attention to the song). I'd rather bring someone along who can play it the way I rehearsed it, sing to a tape backing, sing a capella, or accompany myself. I took my guitar and sang a jazzy version of 'Sitting on the Dock of the Bay'...cutting the song to the best bits that show off my range (like they do on Australian Idol) and singing the instrumental 'whistling' bit in a falsetto...I heard later that that was possibly what made my effort stand out as being suitable for the 'Timon' character I was called back for.
I was asked to take some sheet music from the show and come back in a few minutes to do a specific number. This is possibly where my preparation fell down; I wasn't very familiar with any songs from the show, and I'm not actually that good at following sheet music. Luckily I was left in a room with a piano and I knew enough to figure out the basics. When I showed up again, I kinda stumbled through it...and fortunately, so did the accompanist, who wasn't familiar with it either (this time it worked in my favour!). So we got halfway through again and then they'd heard enough. They were really just looking at how I handled singing & speaking in a character voice, they'd already figured out I could sing. For the next callbacks I had to know that song backwards, but by then I'd had heaps of time to prepare.
I haven't been watching it that much, but the 'Australian Idol' show gave a lot of good clues about what material (and attitude) works and doesn't work for an audition. You need to know what the end product is and what kind of thing the judges will be looking for. Some songs are just not going to be appropriate; others may have been done to death. But even a well-worn song can be presented in a stunning and/or original way. Basically you have to choose songs that are good for you, that you sing well, and can impress with. (You also have to seem like someone future employers would want to work with.) That's all such a highly individual thing; you can listen to so much advice from others but the final decisions can only be yours. What seems amazing (and encouraging) from watching the Aust Idol try-outs was how many people went in there making really BAD decisions. Your main job in preparing your audition is to work out what the right ones are for you. Then you work on polishing your act...but if you've made the right choices, that part should be fun and easy.
Cheers,
Craig
[%sig%]
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