Audition Tips

Ask your private teacher or school director to help you prepare.
Aim to memorize your scales, even if memorization is not required.
Select a solo piece that showcases your strengths, including range, technique, expression, dynamics, and style.
Listen to recordings of an orchestra playing the entire piece your excerpt is taken from.
Practice sight-reading using a method book exercise you’ve never played before. Learn from your mistakes, and consider recording yourself for additional feedback.
Practice frequently with a tuner and metronome to improve pitch and rhythm.
Give as much attention to expressive passages as technical ones, and try to convey a mood and feeling.
Know your audition material well enough so you can keep going even if something unexpected happens.
Record your audition material and listen back to assess your strengths and weaknesses. Lean into your strengths while increasing practice time in the weak areas.
Play your audition material for friends and family and ask them to provide comments.

Dress appropriately and treat the audition as you would a job interview. Let the audition committee know that this is important to you.
Arrive early and warm up.
Bring music and anything else you might need (extra strings, reeds, etc).
Be ready to interact with the audition committee. They are friendly and want you to succeed! Talking and smiling will help you relax, too.
Be courteous and professional.
Take plenty of time at the audition—there’s no need to rush!
Get involved in the music. The audition committee wants to hear the joy and expression of the music as much as they want to hear accuracy.
Use your best posture.
Relax and breathe!
Keep going even if you make mistakes—don’t quit and don’t panic.
Know that if the audition committee asks you to play something with a change it doesn’t mean you played it wrong. They may want to see how you take guidance and make a correction.
Enjoy yourself!
Practice perspective. After an audition, it’s easy to obsess and overanalyze your playing. But keep in mind that no audition/performance is ever perfect—it is a learning experience. Take away from it what worked and what can be improved on for next time.