Feeling bad prescreens didn't work out- advice?

shellybean
Wed, 22 Jan 2014 19:41:50 +0000

turtlefence, did I somehow miss what your daughter auditioned on? Piano?
We also homeschool and we live so far away from civilization, we have to use pack mules to go to the grocery, so I completely understand. There are no teachers within 2 hours of us, no community college, no anything.
Video submissions are difficult – I saw many of them on youtube and was, um, a little less than impressed. I am both blessed and cursed by the fact that S also wants to do recording, so naturally his videos were “events”… That being said, he does much better with a live audition. There’s something about the energy of the space that gets him motivated.
Above all she should not be discouraged and neither should you. S didn’t make it through his composition submission at Cincinnati and that was the one place we thought he’d excel. Yet, he passed through all the way at Denver and he thought he’d be out of his league there. Same with Berklee — he had no problem there and it was his first in-person audition anywhere.
In the end he took a gap year. I think as homeschoolers, this was very easy for us to embrace. In that year, we had planned for him to audition at some local places to get familiar with the process, but he didn’t like that idea. So we’re jumping in again. I am betting your daughter will do great at her in-person auditions. But just know whatever way the wind blows she has time to see her dream through to fruition.
What I would tell her is to relax. No pressure. If she is like the homeschoolers I know, she will be much more connected to a real person in an audition than she might have been on a tape/cd thingy.