UPDATE
In article ,
Charlie Olsen wrote:
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:41:28 -0800, Jenn wrote:
In article ,
jtougas wrote:
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:54:20 +0000, Laurence Payne
trained 100 monkeys to jump on the keyboard
and write:
Actually, we're all fussing far too much. The panel will hear a few
seconds of her singing almost anything, with almost any accompaniment,
recorded on almost anything (all those "almost"s are just to shut up
the resident pedants who delight in reducing any argument to
absurdity:-) and know immediately whether she's a contender or a
wannabee. Anyone who wants to argue, make sure you're based in the
music world rather than the recording world and have real experience
of these things.
Actually, Laurence has a point : those first 30 seconds better sound
amazing... (so should the rest of the recording, but those first 30 in
particular).
That's exactly right. When you have a large stack of recordings to
listen to, you'd better have good stuff up front.
You can say that again!!
I once took out an advertisement in the Village Voice musicians section
looking for a female jazz, light pop singer for my lounge lizard act.
My phone did not stop ringing for weeks, and maybe even months later I was
still getting calls.
I requested a tape/CD , a head shot and bio.
I received 100s of submissions out of which 99.9999 percent of the singers
sucked.
This is where I formed the "Sound Bagger Inverse Proportion Theory as it
applies to talent"
The better the head shot.
The more formal education.
The more buzzwords " accompanied Prof Shlotz during the xxxyyyzzz show"
etc
The WORSE the singer....
Getting back to what you said Jenn, you are so correct.
I could tell within 15 seconds who could sing jazz and who sounded like a
screechy trained monkey using all the classic jazz cliché's their
professors taught them.
I kept a few of the tapes just for laughs because they were so absolutely
horrible I couldn't imagine how these people made it to the University
level.
Well, actually I could after hearing their professor accompanying them.....
It reminded me of a bad Partridge Family episode where Keith falls in love
with a beautiful singer who sings way off key.
Her father proudly tells everyone he taught her everything she knows and
then proceeds to sing the same tune even farther off key than the daughter.
Oh yea, the lady that got the gig sent a tape that sounded like it was
recorded on a Radio Shack portable cassette recorder sitting on top of an
out of tune piano.
She had a marvelous voice and we ended up working together for years.
Go figure.
Good story, and quite typical in my experience. Each year I receive a
couple of hundred scholarship audition recordings. Going through that
stack with the knowledge that the decisions can make make real
differences in people's futures is daunting. Realistically, the people
that put their best music at the beginning of the recording have a
better chance at success. Same thing with audition recordings for
"tenure track" positions in orchestras. If the LA Phil, for example,
has an opening, they might well receive several hundred audition
recordings, from which as few as 3 people will be selected for in-person
audition. You'd better sound great on that recording from the get-go!
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