In live music auditions, sight reading is a long-standing tradition. If sight reading is important to your band, choir, or orchestra, it should be included in your auditions. However, now that recorded auditions are the norm, how is it even possible to include sight reading?
Why Ignoring Sight Reading is a Mistake
Sight reading is a skill needed by a majority of musical ensembles. If you play or sing, you are well aware that the ability to perform a piece you prepared well in advance says nothing about your ability to quickly interpret and play sheet music. Sight reading is a skill unto itself.
Sight reading reveals more than technical ability; it demonstrates how well a performer listens, interprets rhythm, pitch, and style, and maintains composure in the face of the unknown. These skills translate directly to ensemble playing, professional rehearsals, and real-world performance situations.
Why Sight Reading Is Difficult to Replicate in Recorded Auditions
Recorded auditions, by design, allow for multiple takes. Obviously, you could simply distribute sight reading and ask the entrant not to look at it until they record it. Even if they do not look, they still have the ability to stop and start over, which means they are more likely to have multiple reads and it is less likely that the final product is an authentic sight reading.
What Can You Do?
Organizations that value sight-reading ability could approach the challenge in several ways:
- Live Remote Auditions – Using video conferencing, an adjudicator or audition admin can present the sight-reading passage in real time, minimizing the chance of rehearsal.
- Proctored Recordings – Applicants could record their sight-reading segment under supervision, either at a testing site or with a teacher verifying authenticity.
- Substitute Skills Assessment – Instead of sight reading, audition panels might assess similar competencies by asking for prepared excerpts in unfamiliar styles, quick turnaround assignments, or improvisation tasks.
- Hybrid Model – Preliminary rounds may use recorded submissions without sight reading, while final or callback rounds incorporate a live sight-reading component.
- Use Snap Audition - Since you're reading this article on the Snap Audition site you know we had to talk about our sight reading feature. With, "Record-in-Snap" you can include real-time-created sight-readings from PDFs you upload or an on-demanded piece created from Sight Reading Factory. You can get entrants a specific number of tries and set how many minutes they have to complete. You can even setup a starting note (for vocalist) and metronome.
Conclusion
The role of sight reading in auditions must be weighed against the goals of the process. If the emphasis is on performance polish, recorded submissions may suffice without sight reading. But if adaptability and musicianship are essential, organizers should adopt methods that preserve the integrity of the test.
Sight reading remains a valuable window into a musician’s skills, but its implementation in recorded auditions is fraught with challenges. By exploring creative solutions—such as live virtual evaluations, hybrid systems, or Record in Snap—Organizations can uphold fairness while continuing to measure this crucial aspect of musicality.
