A Nervous Wreck

Every year, for Vocal All-State, our school is allowed to send seven kids on each voice part (soprano, bass, tenor, and alto) to audition. So, this Saturday was the audition for the audition to All-State where those seven people were chosen. We have been practicing the audition music for about a month now and I even went to a camp, during the summer, which helped me learn it.

Before I talk about the actual try-out, I want to talk about auditioning as a whole. It is scary. When you sing in the shower, you can belt it out so strongly it would put Aretha to shame, but when you are actually singing for a spot in something, you would be lucky if you were compared to William Hung. Whenever I stand in front of people and sing, my knees get weaker and my voice gets shaky. It is strange because I consider myself a very strong public speaker. Talking in front of people is not the problem, singing is. The thing that I have noticed the most is that the more you sing in front of people, the easier it seems to get (much like public speaking).

Anyway, when everyone had arrived at the choir room, we began warming up and then split into vocal parts. There were two selections that we were expected to have prepared for the try-out. We started off by singing the first song as an entire choir, then we sang it as a section, and finally we sang it by ourselves. After this, we repeated the process again with the second song.

I remember thinking to myself, "Why is everyone so good?" No one in the room was a bad singer or else they would not be auditioning for All-State. After both songs were completed, the director went into his room and deliberated for a few minutes. The tension was spreading through the room like air in a balloon. It could pop any second.

To pass the time, I talked quietly with some friends, until the director made his way back. He told us that he wanted to hear certain people in quartets. Sure enough, I was one of the first people to be selected. We sang through it as a quartet and were asked to sit down. Did I do good or bad? I didn't know! He then informed us that he would post the list later that day and that we could all go home.

He ended up posting the list much earlier than expected and I received a flood of congratulatory text messages. I was extremely relieved. The audition had been enormously terrifying and nerve-wracking. I was just glad it was over. The list was somewhat of a surprise, to me. Some people I thought were going to make it didn't. Still, everyone who auditioned did a great job and the director could have picked anyone from that group. Still, this was only the audition for the audition. I will have something to write just a little bit more about down the road involving the actual audition.