OVS Blog

Sometimes you hear a song that calls out to your very soul and you know you have to sing it, but often there are many more things to consider when choosing your next song. Depending on genre, you might need to find a song that already fits your range and can be comfortably sung as is; or you might even have specific requirements for an audition. Let's talk a little further on some of these scenarios.

If you're an avocational singer who is looking for a song, the only thing you truly need to worry about is finding a song you love enough to put some work into. Once you've done that, you can find the range that will best fit your current voice. This includes looking at the lowest note to the highest note to be sure you can sing them and everything in-between, and then making sure that where most of the song lies within that range is comfortable since you wouldn't want the entire song to sit on or near a note that might be doable once or twice but that you wouldn't want to sing for most of the song. Once you've figured this out, you can purchase your sheet music (if you need it) and get started.

If you're going to be doing something a bit more professionally - especially something like auditions for school, know that for contemporary and jazz music it's fine and normal to change keys as you need to as described above. if you're going the classical or theatre route, though, things can be a bit more tricky.

In the classical world, people are generally expected to stay within the box of their voice type (though, this does seem to be slowly changing somewhat). That means if you're bringing a song or aria for an audition, it's expected that it will be in a recognized published key. And if you think about it, if you're auditioning for an opera - you do need to show that you can sing the range required for the character that you'd like to perform.

Same for theatre - the ranges are already pre-determined by the show, so with your audition song/s you need to demonstrate that you are able to do that.  (Note that this may not be the case for a school audition, depending on the school.) Additionally in theatre, since there is as much emphasis on acting as on the singing (and dancing if that's included in the show), you want to select something that shows your acting ability as well as singing ability. Choose something that shows similar character, or displays a wide breadth of character so they'll see how well you can do with anything.

For any types of auditions, always be sure to look at requirements and meet those specifically. It won't matter if you nail the song if you're not doing what they've asked for. You also need to show that you're responsible and someone who will be easy to work with for them to want to choose you.

In any scenario, above all choose songs you love, that you actually want to work on (or are at least willing to in order to fulfill what's required), that challenge you and push you to your edges if it's a time for learning, or that fit your voice well and show off your voice and your work in every possible way if it's for an audition situation.