AUDITION PEEVES #1 - Don't Give Your Tempo in 3...

Welcome to the new weekly (to the best of my ability) Audition Advice/peeves MiniBlog…

On Mondays I’ll post a bit of Audition Advice or an Audition Peeve on Instagram and Twitter, then on Wednesdays I’ll write a quick blog to further explain what my advice or peeve is about.

This week we jump a little into giving the wrong feel for your song. If there’s a better way to SABOTAGE your own audition… I don’t know what it is.

First off, this is what was posted on Instagram and Twitter:

I can’t remember what the song was that was being explained to me, all I can remember is that the person giving me the tempo/feel gave me the completely wrong feel. The song was clearly in 3/4 and whatever was happening next to my ear was definitely in 4/4. A little bewildered, and at the end of a long day, I just let it happen and didn’t ask for clarification. I take full responsibility for not clarifying what the feel should have been. But still, don’t do that!

I do remember one audition I played years ago, shortly after Beautiful opened, I was playing a required ECC and someone walked into the room and wanted to sing NATURAL WOMAN. “Great,” I thought, “I know this song, no sweat.” She then proceeded to count the song in 4, somehow, I can’t even explain how she did it. She didn’t add a beat to each measure, she also didn’t feel the song in 6/8 with only 2 beats a measure, but what she did do was somehow cram the 3/4 feel into a 4/4 feel and it was confusing. But being a song that we all know and I’ve played about a million times I didn’t think twice and just moved on to play. Needless to say I somehow had her feel stuck in my head and for the life of me I couldn’t fix what I was playing. I was playing the song in this weird 4/4 time that was just flat wrong. She had a terrible audition, I looked like a horrible pianist, and the walls came tumbling down.

Moral of the story, know the feel of your song cold.

As part of your coachings, make sure that you know how to communicate the feel, style and tempo of your song to your pianist. You’ll walk into the room more confident and it will show.