Fall 2020 Choir Auditions

Thanks for your interest in the LC choir program! We have an easy and painless audition to place you in the choir that’s right for you. This year, we’ll be doing these via an easy online form and a recording that you can submit. This web page will walk you through the process.

We can’t wait to meet you and are so glad that you’ll be joining us!

If you have any difficulty, whether it’s with the technology or the musical concept or the anxiety of doing this, you can let us know that in the form, and we’ll reach out to you with alternative ideas!

If you wish to be considered for Cappella Nova, please be sure to submit your audition form before Friday evening at 9 p.m., September 4th. Auditions for the other two choirs can still be submitted any time before the end of Add/Drop period, although we would love to get those as soon as possible (ideally also during that first week).

Step 1: Create Your Recording (about 10 minutes)

For this process, you’ll need 3 things:
- 1 smart phone (you can borrow one if you don’t have one) – this is for making your “selfie video.”
- A second device, which could be another smart phone, a computer, or a tablet. Have this page pulled up on that second device.
- A pair of headphones, which you’ll have plugged into the second device.

1. Find a place you can sing a little. It can be in your dorm room/apartment (which is ideal, if possible), under a tree, or in a music department space. We are finishing up preparations for our music department spaces in the time of COVID, so if you will need to sign up for a music department space, please email Becky Guderian at guderian@lclark.edu, and she can help you as soon as the spaces are ready.

2. Look at this current page on your second device, and keep it open in the background.

3. Put your headphones on and plug them into your second device. Then, on your second device, pull up either THIS RECORDING if you think you have a lower voice (altos, basses) or if you don’t know what your voice part is, or THIS RECORDING if you think you have a higher voice (sopranos, tenors). The recording will take you through a voice warm-up, a pitch-matching exercise, and some questions about your sight-reading background.

4. Press PLAY on the second device to listen to your recording of Kathy FitzGibbon walking you through the audition, and press RECORD on your smart phone app! You’ll be singing along with Kathy’s recording, but your smart phone will just record you. Don’t worry about having a flawless recording – we just want to get to know you and your voice.

5. At the end of the video, I will ask you to describe your sight-reading background. If you have no experience reading music, no problem – just let me know that, and stop the recording after that! If you have some experience, can you tell me what you know? (Names of pitches, key signatures, rhythms??) And if you have some experience and want to be considered for our more select choir, would you please sight read as much of this excerpt as works for you? I’ll give you the starting pitch in the video recording.

6. Save your recording!

 

Step 2: Fill Out This Form (about 5 minutes)

Please fill out the answers on this Google form and at the end, upload your recording!

Thank you very much!