Choosing audition music for the next year’s band auditions is always tricky. You may have beginners trying out for the same band as advanced third year player. You have 8th graders competing against juniors in high schools.
The big question is – How do you challenge the top students without intimidating the younger students?
Here’s a wonderful and incredibly easy solution:
There is a series of free printable band audition music on-line! (link below)
Here is why it’s awesome:
– It has two sets – one for middle school and one for high school.
– The music is one page long and gets progressively harder very quickly.
– Line 1 can be played by the youngest players, yet the last few lines are very difficult.
– It is written where you can practice it in band rehearsal with everyone playing together.
– It’s great quality. It’s well written and enjoyable to learn.
Different ways you can present it to the students:
– Let them play only as much as they want.
– Require that for the “top band” they must play to a certain point, but if they are not able to that is ok, they just won’t be considered for the top ensemble.
– You can teach it to them in class since it’s written to be practiced together.
– You can choose to have them learn it on their own to see who will work on it the most.
– You can add scales or sight-reading to make it a more complete audition.
Another benefit is that if they are interested in band camp, this gives them a chance to prepare audition music now – before school gets out. We will be doing a post soon on ways to get students to attend band camp. This is West Texas A&M University’s band camp audition music. It gives you a great chance to let them know about the option of attending this 2-week camp since they have already learned the music.
There are students from around the country that attend the WTAMU band camp (& band directors’ workshop), but if you have students interested in a camp closer to your town, see what kind of audition music they have available and be sure to get that to the kids sooner rather than later. (Feel free to post the link to those band camp audition materials on the Facebook post if you think the quality of the audition music is at the same level of the WTAMU music. There may be other directors that would prefer to use a camp closer to home and would like to use that music for their end of year auditions.)
Here’s the link for the free, printable music:
Print 2020 Audition Music from this link.
We hope this printable band audition music improves and simplifies your band auditions this year!
Related Reading:
Band Seating Chart (Free Template)
Free Metronome & Sheet Music
How Using Lanyards Can Help You Listen to Every Student in Beginning Band
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