Online Audition Video Instructions

BEFORE FILMING YOUR AUDITION VIDEO

Please put your video together in the order of the numbered list below.

• Do an audio test beforehand to make sure your sound doesn’t distort. (To adjust microphone levels on a Mac, go into System Preferences > Sound > Input tab and lower the input volume.)

• Your video can either be in one complete take OR edited together. The audio must remain raw and untouched – no EQ, compression, reverb, or pitch correction of any kind. We want to hear you as you sound in the room.

FILMING YOUR AUDITION VIDEO

1. Introduction

   • Say hello!  Tell us your name, age, pronouns, voice part, and where you’re from.

2. Main skill

   • If you are primarily a solo/part singer, sing two contrasting solos for us, unaccompanied. We want to hear your tone, phrasing, intonation, personality, and energy. Have fun with these and pick songs that are in your comfort zone, we want to see you at your best! Just a verse/chorus of each song is plenty. No musical theatre or classical, please.

   • If you are primarily a beatboxer/vocal percussionist, please give us a demonstration (approx 1-2 mins), which can include anything and everything you’re comfortable with (straight-ahead beats, fills, various sounds, freestyle beatboxing, etc). ALSO, please include a segment where you do a simple beat at a comfortable tempo along with a metronome. No need to be flashy for this part, we just want to see that you can groove and keep a solid tempo.

   • If you are primarily a bass singer, sing us a bass line using bass syllables (dm, doom, bm, ba, etc.) and also a bass vocal solo. The bass line can be something you just make up, or it can be an existing bass line. For the bass vocal solo, we just want to hear you sing a low range solo with lyrics. For both of these demonstrations, we’re looking for tone, pitch accuracy, and style. Note: if you are a bass with a higher solo register, you will also have the opportunity to show that to us as your secondary skill (see below).

3. Part singing

   • NOTE: This is the most important part of the audition!

   • You can download the materials for both “Georgia On My Mind” and “I Wish” *CLICK HERE*

   • Use the learning tracks and sheet music to learn whichever voice part suits you best on each song. (Beatboxers must sing for both examples.)

   • Pay attention to the phrasing, dynamics, and inflections of the voices on the demo, and do your best to blend with them.

   • Once you have each song learned, play the “performance” track for your part and sing along with it (your part will be missing from this track, you fill it in with your voice). When you record yourself doing this, we want to hear mostly you, but also the performance track in the background as well. You don’t need to have it memorized.

   • For “I Wish,” please snap along.

4. Scales

   • Sing along with our scale guides *CLICK HERE* and stop singing once you can’t sing any higher or lower.  Don’t be shy, just go for it, we know the extreme ranges aren’t always gonna be pretty!  For scales going up, sing “eeee-aaahh” and use your chest/mix voice as high as you can, and then flip into head voice and continue. For scales going down, sing “yah yah yah yah yah”. If this is confusing, check out auditions from previous years on YouTube.

5. Secondary skill (optional)

   • If you are a solo/part singer and you also can sing bass and/or beatbox, show us what you got! If not, just skip this step.

   • If you are a bass or beatboxer, please sing a solo for us as your secondary skill. (For basses, this should be more of a baritone-range solo.)

   • Also, if you are a bass who can beatbox or a beatboxer who can sing bass, show us that as well!

6.  Misc. skills (optional)

   • If you have any other special vocal skills, demonstrate them here. This can be literally anything you want! Scatting, singing in another language, original songs, multitrack video harmonizing with yourself, instrument imitation, throat singing, sound effects, vocal impersonations, etc! Instruments/tracks are okay for this section if it’ll help showcase one of your skills.

7. Personal statement

   • Briefly tell us why you’re interested in coming to A Cappella Academy, and what you think you would add to camp!

AFTER FILMING YOUR AUDITION VIDEO

Once complete, upload your audition video to YouTube.

• Be sure to set your video to “unlisted” or “public.” If you set it to “private” we will not be able to view it!

• In the caption, please include timestamps for the start of each new section.

After uploading your video, fill out our online application: