✰ How do I audition? ✰
To audition, simply record yourself singing the song that we are holding auditions for.
✰ Do I have to sing the whole song? ✰
No, not unless you want to. A general guideline is to sing until the end of the first chorus, or roughly a minute of the song.
✰ Where do I post it to? ✰
You can upload it as a video or an mp3, and post it to the correct audition thread. You can post your video as a response to the audition vid, but either way, posting to the forums is a must.
✰ Early Bird Deadline? What? ✰
To ensure we do not receive infinite auditions at the last moment, we will start to incorporate an "Early Bird Deadline" and a "Lazy Bum Deadline." How this system works:
Early Bird Deadline - Generally will be open for 3 weeks. THIS DEADLINE WILL NOT CHANGE.
People who audition during this time period are guaranteed to be considered.
Lazy Bum Deadline - Essentially, this is the time between the Early Bird Deadline and the announcement of the winners (approximately a week, but subject to change if we still need more auditions)
This will be a first-come-first-serve system - once the spots are filled, the auditions will close.
✰ Will there be extensions to the deadlines? ✰
As mentioned above, the Early Bird Deadline WILL NOT CHANGE. The Lazy Bum Audition, however, will go on for as long as it needs for us to get enough people.
✰ Do's and Don't's? ✰
DO! Learn the song! We cannot stress enough how important this is! If you learned the song at the last minute, we have no idea if you would be capable of singing the song correctly. Having too many mistakes in the lyrics is the first sign for us to toss out your audition.
DO! Sing in the original pitch! Pretty self explanatory. We understand that some songs might have hard ranges, but singing the song lower or higher does nothing.
DO! Do a bit of mixing. Though it is true that we want to hear your voice as naturally as possible, just a tiny bit of adjusting (NOT AUTOTUNE!) can do wonders. Noise removal, for example, will let us focus on your voice more. Reverb smooths out your voice, and gives a more pleasing impression overall. But most importantly, please do not let your voice clip too much! We have no way of knowing whether you put your vocal track too loud, or if your microphone has bad recording quality.
DON'T! Improv too much. This is something we've been seeing a lot of lately, so it's going on here now. As a chorus, it makes it hard to mix when different people choose to add little "somethings" to different parts of the piece. Though it may sound fine or really cool on its own, it will mess with the chorus, thus, try your best to stay as close to the original as possible when auditioning. This includes adding cadences, scooping into notes, etc.
DON'T! BS the audition. If you don't take the audition seriously, we will assume that you won't take the real chorus seriously either. As the auditions get more competitive, even the smaller mistakes can set you apart from others. We understand that people will put more effort into their final recordings, but if you don't put any effort into the audition, we don't know how well you can really sing.
✰ How are auditions judged? ✰
There are several factors we take into account:
Pitch Please sing in tune. If you miss too many notes or sing in a different key entirely, we cannot accept your audition.
Timing and Lyrics As mentioned above, please learn the song. Even if you say you will learn it better later, not singing the song correctly leaves us a bad impression.
Mic Quality Though it may not be your fault that your mic is static-y, it is only in the chorus's best interest to choose those with better mic qualities.
Tone We do not judge very harshly in this category, since we believe that how good a voice sounds is very subjective. What we do care about, though, is if your voice fits the song. For example, too soft of a voice for a techno-dance song, or an abrasive voice for a ballad would not likely be chosen.
Concerning Returning Audition-ers Because we want to give everyone a chance, we will place priority on those who have not been in previous choruses. That is not to say that someone with lower singing abilities will beat someone of higher abilities simply because they are new. This would only apply in a situation where there are 2 singers of the same level and only one spot left; the singer who is new would get the spot.
In short, our judging process looks a bit like this:
Pitch, Timing, Lyrics > Mic Quality > Voice/Tone > New or Returning Member
✰ Thank you for reading and we hope you audition! ✰
