Berklee Audition.

[sammyp]

This is off-topic to the audition discussion, but after you graduated, was it the skills you learned or the ability to say you went to berklee that made the biggest difference? That's what some of my friends have asked me, none of my friends see music as more than a hobby.
Plus, finding out as much as possible about schools/paths to take is a good idea to begin with haha.

as Kobaia said ...thee arranging skills learned at school are invaluable ...the real awakening to a bigger picture ...but you will also be heavily influenced in a postive way by your classmates and teachers ...my musicianshiip was heavily enhanced by hanging out with my buddies as they challenged me to get into stuff i had never been exposed to before .....it's all good ....music school!

unless your a rocker in a jazz program hating every minute of it ....fit the program to what you love in your heart ...not because you heard someone say "if you can play jazz you can play anything!"

 

[Snarf]

To the OP:

The tunes you picked are unimpressive. Pick some better ones. I like the Sklar suggestion; maybe some Phil Collins?

I don't know how you play, so I can't tell you "wait a year or two" or "don't bother" or even "you're the ****, go right now!!" What I can tell you though is there are plenty of decent players there that don't play much jazz. Hell, there are plenty of straight up poor players as well. Many of those more mediocre players auditioned with the intention of majoring in something like MPE or business or music synth. Those are majors you can't exactly audition for until you're already going there.

If you are a mediocre player and get accepted, you will be in the majority of first year bass principles at Berklee. Your first couple months, you will realize that the skill ceiling is a whole hell of a lot higher than you could have imagined. That's when one of two things can happen: You quit trying to get better and just settle for a crappy indie band and move to Allston, OR, you accept that for a solid year or so, you will have to lock yourself in a practice room for 8 hours a day.

If you're not a good player going in, and you don't put in the shed time, you won't get anything out of Berklee but a lot of wasted tuition. I've been there. I was not a good player going in (even though I did get a decent scholarship), but by my 8th semester I was doing very well, playing with the best guys up there at the time, played in the Yellowjackets ensemble, Schlink's fusion band, and subbing all the time for level 7 big bands (chord scale madness, urban outreach). Lots of the guys I knew are in NYC now, and that's where I'll be in 9 months or so, reconnecting and hustling my ass off. Those connections are worth their weight in gold.

 

[Kobaia]

To the OP:

The tunes you picked are unimpressive. Pick some better ones. I like the Sklar suggestion; maybe some Phil Collins?

Bingo!! thank you Ian

 

[TripleDouble]

Berklee grad here, and I did well on my audition(s), though it was many, many years ago. Those tunes are cool, but you'll definitely want to walk some basslines to a prepared jazz tune, it needn't be super complex, just to show you have a working knowledge of chord changes and layin' it down. Just get stuff together you can feel solid about and play as musically as you can, they're more interested in your musicianship than your style of choice. Blow a chop or two too, but mostly play like a very solid, humble bass player first and foremost. You'll also read some chord charts, and then some notation too, i think it was a pretty intermediate selection. The current chair of the Bass Dept. is a super down to earth guy, and NOT a shredder, one of his key philosophies is when NOT to play. There are plenty of folks who go to Berklee and are not burnin jazz cats, and it's a great place to carve out your own musical identity if you don't get sucked into the competitive virtuoso waste of time. Good luck, it's a fun place with a lot of knowledge to be had and career opportunities to be tapped into.

Oh and I'm sorry Kobaia, but JPJ is a total powerhouse of a bass player, multi-instrumentalist and arranger, up there with any of the greats of any genre. That is a stone cold fact. You should probably check him out. If the OP likes rock music and is digging into the Lemon Song, he's doing the right stuff.

 

[sammyp]

Honestly, if you can pay the tuition Berklee will accept you and teach you to read whole notes for $16,730 a semester. Don't sweat your audition, they need to pay their rent. Remember they also have majors like Music Production and Engineering, Music Therapy, and Music Business. The people in those majors are not performance majors and a good bit of them can't play worth a damn, yet they get in and make it through, or they dont, the graduation rate is less than 50% afterall. The retention rate is amazingly 86% now, which is a step up from 25% when I was there.

I would have to agree with the people who said play tunes that show off your strengths and your ability to function well as a bass player in a rhythm section. If you can play a few different styles well, do it. Just don't go in there attempting something fancy and difficult that you can't really own. Picking something above your ability in a poor attempt to impress the pros and then folding all over it is never good. (Although, that's EXACTLY what I did and managed to make it) lol

i think this about sums it up ....Berklee and every other schoolk need paying customers!

 

[lsabina]

Interesting commentary from a Berklee student who wishes she had played jazz, and not "to her strengths," at her audition.
Check it out at: Berklee Placement and Ensemble Ratings Audition

 

[johndough247]

Another Berklee grad here. I auditioned for the fall of 2004 so not that far back and got the max you could get for the B.E.S.T. (Berklee Entering Student Tour) scholarship, which at the time was half of tuition...not bragging just telling my experience.

As many have stated...the key to not only getting into Berklee, but also doing well at Berklee and most importantly, surviving in the real world is Versatility. This doesn't have to be a "Rock vs. Jazz vs. Latin" thing...why can't you do it all? At Berklee I clearly remember weeks where I'd record a small orchestra one day, play on a rock session the other day, track bass overdubs on a R&B/Hip hop tune then go out to play a gospel or jazz/fusion type gig. It's such a unique environment and you will grow by leaps and bounds if you just keep an open mind, be friendly/approachable, and have solid work ethics.

The songs you chose are really pretty simple to be honest as far as bass goes...if you REALLY wanted to do stuff in those 3 styles (however, I HIGHLY suggest you throw some jazz in there), here's what i'd pick off the top of my head:

Instead of "The Boss" - James Brown, check out:
"I can understand it" or "Keep on doing it" or hell almost ANYTHING by The New Birth
"What is hip" or "Only so much oil in the ground" by Tower of Power (or almost anything from them too lol)
A great (aren't they all? lol) James Jamerson (Motown) Bassline...there's quite a bit, search TB for more info.
If you can play these verbatim, then you're in the ballpark for what they're looking for in this area.

Instead of "I Want you (she's so heavy)" - The Beatles:
This is easy..."Hey bulldog" or "Paperback Writer" if you really wanna do the Beatles.
again...note for note.

instead of "The lemon song" - Led Zeppelin
I love JPJ, but I don't know if I'd choose Zep...if i had to it'd MAYBE be something like "Living Loving Maid"...but overall I'd pick a harder rock song, you wanna show you're technically proficient but also that you can groove and don't sound robotic.

Here's what I did from what I can remember:
-Kid Charlemagne - Steely Dan...amazing chuck rainey bassline
-I think i did Ornithology - Charlie Parker, but I might be wrong, it was definitely a bebop jazz tune (I played the melody, followed by walking through the changes for them to solo, and then fumbled through my own solo...hey it's a school, i had to learn something lol)
-also did a song from Marcus Miller's M2 album for a more funky, slap oriented tune, can't remember which...i think it was either "Lonnie's Lament" or "Power"

Things you should try to work on/learn before you get there if you don't know them:
-Playing a walking bassline through chord changes
-Sightreading
-Basic scales (major, natural and harmonic minor) and their arpeggios. If you can learn modes, even better
-Ear Training...one of the most invaluable tools IMO. I've played so many gigs, sessions and shows mainly cause people knew I could catch things quickly from just hearing it. It's a shame (i've seen it happen) when a player is always showing how "incredible" he/she is and then you sing/play back a relatively simple line to learn and you gotta repeat it a million times before he/she gets it right. Remember that MOST the things you hear are based around some form of a major or minor scale, work on recognizing those sounds. Oh...and you'll get to skip all those Ear Training classes when you start school lol.

All this might seem like a lot to you...or it might not. If it is, take your time...don't rush it. They don't expect you to go in sounding like (insert favorite bass virtuoso here), but to at least have the ambition to strive for that level and higher. There's no shame in waiting a year to work on things. Berklee was a great experience for me, I did MP&E and still learned a lot about performance not only from my teachers (haha I took a semester of private lessons from Esperanza Spalding when she was there, and she's my age! that was crazy lol) to all my friends and colleagues passing through recording sessions or those in the program itself (not all of us sucked lol, I knew some MPE, music synth and Music Ed. players that were some of the best all-around players in the school)...I'm looking forward to the next generation of Berklee alum cause at least they all had to audition to get in the door (unlike those from my time).

Oh and one last thing many of us tend to forget when we got there (some ppl get depressed from this :-S): There will always be someone better than you around the corner...your job is to learn what you can from them, either directly (asking questions), indirectly (just from listening) or both.

Good luck, keep us posted on what you decide!!