A Guide to Preparing for Music School Prescreenings
The Lightpost is a reader-supported blog. When you buy through links on our website, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I remember talking to some of my colleagues at the University of South Carolina about Graduate School Auditions. Most of these conversations were positive, with them sharing stories about the fun times they had and the fun repertoire they prepared, but it seems that there was always a collective groan when talking about prescreenings.
What Are Prescreenings?
For those, who don’t know what I am referring to, prescreenings are recorded videos of prospective students playing their audition repertoire that are sent in with their application. The school then invites the students with the best prescreenings to do a live audition.
Why Use Prescreenings?
While recording prescreenings can be quite an arduous task, I think there is some value in them for the following reasons.
They allow schools with a ton of applicants to bring the number of live auditions to a reasonable amount.
It can save prospective students who are not at the level to audition time and money in the long run.
It can allow for teachers to have more thorough auditions and interviews.
It can give prospective students a chance to make a really strong first impression with the teachers.
Ultimately they save both the school and the auditionees time and money!
How Do I Prepare?
So, assuming you have your master audition list and now exactly what to record, it’s time to start coming up with a plan!
Recommended Reading
Haven’t picked out your repertoire yet? It’s all good! We got an article to help you out!
However, when I went through this process I had no real plan to prepare for recording. While everything worked out for me in the end, there were a number of super frustrating moments, some super late nights, and crazy early mornings.
So this plan that I am giving to you now, is what I recommend after going through that experience and reflecting on what I could have done better. This is also coupled with some newfound organization skills and experience recording myself and other people. So let’s dive into it.
Create a Recording Calendar
Want to save yourself some late nights, early mornings, and possible recording during thanksgiving break? Then you are going to want to create a recording calendar. Here are the steps I would use to plan it out:
Gather the Rep!
Create a master list of all of your required prescreening material
Take this list and break it into chunks that you could record in around 2 hours of recording time.
Be conservative in what you think you can record. Don’t try to stuff everything into one session.
For example, don’t record all of your snare drum stuff in one day. Record only your snare drum excerpts, then record your snare drum solos another day.
Order these chunks by the level of difficulty to record.
For example, I would put my marimba solo as probably the hardest thing.
Keep in mind the length when making this list. An excerpt is considerably easier to get all correct notes on compared to a five-minute marimba solo.
Schedule It Out!
Figure out a day of the week, that you could consistently record.
For me, most people were out of the school of music building by 7:00 on Fridays.
Find the date that your prescreenings are due and then go back four weeks to your assigned recording day.
For example, if prescreenings are due on December 1st, 2021. I would mark down Friday, November 1st.
This will be your final recording day.
Start assigning chunks for each recording day working backward, with the hardest piece on your final recording day and your easiest piece on the first day.
Check out the example below!
Why Use This Schedule and Plan
When I was thinking about this plan it hopes to solve a number of issues that I encountered when recording my own prescreenings.
Getting Used to Recording
Unfortunately, if you have never played in front of mics and a camera before, it can be a pretty daunting experience. Some colleagues I’ve met do really well in front of a camera, some do okay, and some really struggle. In any case, you are going to want to get used to this experience, which is why I suggest you start recording with the easiest rep possible.
As you go through this recording session, you will get increasingly comfortable in front of the recording equipment, with the hopes that by the time you are scheduled to do the most difficult rep there are no issues. It’s all about momentum and experience!
Creating a Buffer for When Things Go Wrong
The reason why I asked you to move your final recording session to four weeks before the prescreening due date is so that you can move recordings back when things go wrong. There could be any number of issues like:
You couldn’t record everything you planned in the session.
You listen back and find a glaring issue with a recording you thought would work.
Technological or room Sign-out issues.
You needed more practice for the upcoming session than you thought.]
If something happens you are covered! Just shift everything back a week and keep trucking ahead. No big deal. It’s worth mentioning that a plan like this would have prevented me from recording the day before celebrating thanksgiving with my family.
Removing Things From Your Practice Plate
One of my favorite aspects of this plan is that after recording your first chunk you don’t have to practice for it anymore! Every single week you are lightening your load, so you can begin to put that energy towards the bigger recording projects coming up. Eventually, you will only have to practice one or two things and trust me. Future you is going to be thanking you thoroughly for this.
Making Individual Sessions Manageable
This is one major mistake that I made when recording myself. I put way too much on for one session, which ultimately hurt me in the long run. A few things happened when I did this:
I would get in my own head if something were to go wrong in the first one or two pieces of rep, which would continue to mess with me during the rest of the session.
I would get fatigued both mentally and physically meaning my performance would suffer.
The recordings I did on the backend were usually lower quality than the front end I would end up not being able to use them.
Learn from my mistakes! Keep it short and sweet for each session.
Practice Tips for Recording
So now that you have a super-powered plan for recording, it’s time start practicing! However, I have a few tips that will help you make the most of your recording sessions.
Record Every Single Practice Session
This may seem a little aggressive, but I just hear me out. One thing that you will learn when you start recording, especially with high-quality microphones, is that they pick up everything that you miss.
When you are in the middle of playing, I’m sure that you are diverting a lot of attention to the sound of your playing, but ultimately you will miss things. Especially the nitty-gritty details.
For me, I discovered this while listening to my recordings a particular soft snare drum excerpt. I found that my left-hand sound had a different timbre than my right, I compressed time during rests, I would open up my rhythm slightly in a particular bar, and my dynamics were not as diverse as I thought.
Ultimately, I got a recording I liked, but it took me way too much time! So if you want to get a headstart, I would recommend using your phone or even a zoom microphone to record sections of your practice time.
Starting this feedback loop earlier will improve your playing tremendously and will help you get used to performing in front of a microphone. It’s a win-win!
Good Luck!
With this information, you are going to set yourself up for hopefully, painless prescreenings. If you have any questions about this topic, please feel free to leave a comment down below, or shoot me an email on my website! I would love to chat with you.
