<p>woodwinds, thanks for the update. So she only cheated on two of them? And got denied at both? </p>
<p>How’s the friendship coming along?</p>
<p>I talked to my brother about this issue. He was a well-regarded recording engineer for a time in Manhattan. He says the cheaters don’t win, as editing can’t improve musicality, and as others pointed out they have to play live at some point.</p>
<p>My daughter’s friend applied to a bunch of places. Some schools didn’t have a policy on editing (as others have pointed out) so edits may have been done there too. She apparently decided to cheat on the two where she ran out of time to re-record at the studio.</p>
<p>Ah, the friendship is so-so.</p>
<p>I also think that when it comes to mistakes, committees are much more forgiving than we think. They are looking for musicianship, artistry, technique, etc. When son was doing grad school auditions, he was at a highly competitive school. His first piece was very well known and he had quite a number of memory slips. It really kind of threw him off his game. At the end of the piece, one of the committee of about 10 said to him, “Don’t worry about it. Just play your next piece.” Son played his next piece and said it went really well. He felt it was probably the best he had ever played that particular piece. He was admitted to the school with a very nice scholarship. (Son doesn’t know who threw him the lifeline, but he was very grateful for it!)</p>
<p>My point is that auditioners get nervous. They make mistakes. They aren’t perfect players or they would not be looking to go to school to improve their skills. Committees know this. A pre-screen with mistakes won’t keep you out of the running if your overall performance is up to snuff for that particular program or school.</p>
<p>Second that. In fact, my D’s teacher insisted that she include a take on her prescreens that had a mistake - not a huge one - because the recovery from the mistake apparently communicated all sorts of things that Those In The Know would recognize as Positive. (It also didn’t hurt that the rest of the recording was pretty good.)</p>
<p>A professional engineer can do a lot of things with a recording, they can in theory even fix each individual note of mistakes and so forth. That said, on a classical instrumental piece it would be extremely difficult to repair a truly bad performance to make it shine (it is a lot easier with pop music, where systems like auto tune can make your typically untalented pop star sound halfway decent). I also like what someone said, that having a slip and recovering can show a lot about the musician, there are a lot of talented instrumentalists who can play perfectly but if they slip up fall apart.</p>
<p>A professional engineer can do a lot of things with a recording, they can in theory even fix each individual note of mistakes and so forth. That said, on a classical instrumental piece it would be extremely difficult to repair a truly bad performance to make it shine (it is a lot easier with pop music, where systems like auto tune can make your typically untalented pop star sound halfway decent). I also like what someone said, that having a slip and recovering can show a lot about the musician, there are a lot of talented instrumentalists who can play perfectly but if they slip up fall apart.</p>
<p>I would just like to take this opportunity to say that auto tune is pretty much the worst thing ever.</p>
<p>That is all.</p>