A note about cruise ship auditions

Dear Musicians,

An audition for a cruise ship gig, any audition for that matter, can never determine with 100% certainty that a particular musician will be the right man/woman for the gig. Thus we would like to mention one more time how important it is for you to inform yourself about what the gig entails and ask yourself if you believe you can do the gig. This, of course, works only if you’re honest about it.

You know your own playing the best. You know what your weaknesses and your strengths are. You’re doing yourself a disservice by holding back on that knowledge during auditions. Remember the goal is not to get past the audition, but to be able to do the job properly.

Auditions are meant to give the auditioner the best possible idea of the quality of a musician. For obvious time constraint reasons, these auditions thus focus on evaluating the more obvious elements such as finger technique, embouchure, sight-reading skills, tone, musicianship etc. and thus may neglect some of the less obvious skills.

In the professional world of music, for example, it is necessary for rhythm section players especially to know tunes by heart. Very often, tunes are called with little or no notice at all and thus it helps if you know chord changes to some of the most common standards and, ideally, how to transpose them.

This is a typical area where auditions can’t do a great job because we couldn’t possibly ask people to play a large number of standards to make sure they know them.

This is just one example and there are many more. The point is that musicians need to have the integrity to analyze what they can do and what they can’t and be upfront about it. If you barely get through the audition and end up on a ship, your weaknesses will be exposed for sure. There’s not “getting by” once you face the music and chances of getting fired are still pretty good, even if you’ve passed an audition.

Bottom line: the people that are auditioning you are your friend, not your enemy. Misleading them during auditions is most likely going to hurt you and your career in the end. Being upfront about your strengths and weaknesses is the best you can do for yourself.