#133: Dear Julie… full songs for auditions?
Wednesday 1/8/25
DEAR JULIE… I have my college auditions starting and I heard that we need to learn the full song in addition to just our cuts. Is that true? I feel like it’s never ending!
OK, so yes and no. i’ll tell you this… There are no absolute in this business. There’s no such thing as “always“ and no such thing as “never“. There’s only “possibly…“. What you have to do is determine for yourself whether or not you wanna be ready for any in all scenarios.
It is probably a good idea to know your full song, have the sheet music prepared and be ready to perform it if asked. I will tell you this… For the last two years not one of my students has been asked for that. I’m someone who likes to make decisions based on data and information. For me, the data and information tell me that the likelihood that someone will be asked to perform their audition song in its entirety is null.
If you choose to learn your full song, it is also important that you have the sheet music for the full song as well as a competent audio track of a compliment in case you need to do a virtual audition or in case you’re instructed to bring tracks to your audition for a specific school.
Now, if you work with someone like me, you might have a cut of a song that is very different than the standard song straight through. Making cuts is a very time-consuming and intricate task when I make cuts. It’s very rare. I just do the last 16 or 32 bars. Most of the time I’m taking a little bit of the beginning a little bit of the chorus, a little bit of the bridge, and then a little bit of the ending. I’m sort of restructuring the song to make the most out of the 75 seconds we get in the audition room. If your cuts are like that… Then it might be pretty challenging to learn the song as is because your brain is gonna have to compartmentalize almost like you’re a swing or an understudy. It would be like learning an entirely new song as opposed to just the beginning part of the song.
Like I said, I don’t see this happening for most people, but it’s always a possibility. If you’re someone who wants to be ready for any and all scenario, then you’re going to probably wanna learn the full song. If you’re someone like me who teaches my students to prepare 3 to 4 songs and the cuts are really designed to tell a full story already… Then you’re pretty much as prepared as you can be. I do not prep the full song… And if my students are asked to sing the full song, they are instructed to answer that question by saying “ I’d be happy to do the same cut again for you or sing one of the other three cuts I have!” - by saying this in this way, we are gently letting them know that we are not prepared to the full song. And quite honestly, if this is something the school wants you to do, they need to tell you in advance.
Dreams Don’t Die
Julie