Opera and concert performances—especially at the student, amateur, and semiprofessional level—is becoming more ubiquitous every year. Marketing-savvy singers, as well as opera companies seeking funding and new audiences, are keenly aware of the need for good video clips of their best performances to splice into their websites and broadcast over YouTube. It’s getting to the point where many of us have more quality video
recordings of ourselves than audio. And now that the technology to burn our own fancy DVDs—with fancy menus—is in more and more of our hands, you might find yourself wondering, “Can I send this as my demo?”
Being one of those singers, I decided to ask. I wrote to competitions, Young Artist Programs, and opera companies around the country—ones that specifically requested a demo—to find out where they stood on the matter. Here are some answers I received.
Marciem Bazell Director of Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s Young Artist Program and Assistant Professor and Director of Opera, University of Missouri-Kansas City:
“I can hear everything I need to from a CD. I can even hear if the singer is a good actor by the way he or she sings the aria or art song. I don’t need to see what the singer looks like or any histrionics. I need to know that they can portray the character and intent of the music by the way they color their voice and text and by the way they make music.
“I didn’t need to see Marilyn Horne singing the Kindertotenlieder for her to reduce me to tears. As a director, I know that if the singer has that kind power over me when I hear them, that they will be brilliant when I get them up on stage. If they are dull dramatically or musically on a CD, there will be no hope for them even though they are choreographed, under lights, and in costume. Art is so subjective that you might never get this kind of answer from anyone else you have interviewed. I personally demand that kind of musical and linguistic sophistication, for which I need no DVD.”
Nino Sanikidze Head Coach of the Young Artist Program, LA Opera:
“I prefer CDs. The sound quality is usually better, and DVDs are often tricky to calibrate, especially if they are sent from Europe.”
Fran Hartshorn Assistant to the General Director, Lyric Opera San Diego:
“I think we prefer to receive CDs, but we’ll accept DVDs. I think we more commonly receive CDs, but I realize that DVDs are becoming more accessible and easier for singers to produce. I suppose a DVD is nice, but we can usually tell what we need to know from a CD accompanying a headshot.”
Clare Burovac Director of Artistic Operations, Portland Opera:
“Robert Ainsley, our associate music director and chorus master, listens to the YAP applicant CDs with me. We usually have a very limited amount of time to examine each application and listen to a selection or two from each CD, since his duties require him to be available for all mainstage rehearsals. CDs are very convenient for us, and we are leaning toward the YAP Tracker model of online applications. If YAP Tracker allows singers to embed video the way you can embed audio, then that might be a great option.
“All that being said, we might be interested in DVDs in the future—but at the moment, we’re not set up to handle that.”
“Also, I’d like to remind singers to check their CDs in an old-fashioned boom box. Every year, we get 15 to 20 CDs that won’t play on our boom box, and then we need to move to a different space to play them on a computer. Even then, sometimes they won’t play, and I need to contact the singers and ask them to send me MP3s.”
David Holley Director of Lynam Competition and Director of Opera and Professor of Music, University of North Carolina-Greensboro:
“For the purposes of the Charles A. Lynam Vocal Competition, DVDs would not work, since the preliminary judging is done anonymously. Each contestant is instructed to put only their repertoire on the disc and not their name. When the applications are received, each entrant is given a number to ensure anonymity. CDs are the only way for us to administer our preliminary round.
“Were I to be holding auditions for a summer program, I would feel differently. I think a DVD would be a great ‘informative’ tool. Composers and librettists conceive their operas to be seen in addition to being heard, and this element would be indispensable in making the best decision possible in that circumstance.”
As evident from the answers above, while a lot of companies lean toward CDs, their reasons for doing so are different—ranging from the technical to the artistic. With no pure consensus, your best bet is to ask before you send a DVD.
They won’t let me send a DVD and I don’t have a good CD. What should I do?
All is not lost. If you don’t have time or resources to record a good audio demo, but you have a great DVD with great audio, it is possible to extract the audio and make a CD. And the process can actually be quite simple.
If you own QuickTime Pro—as in, you shelled out the extra bucks to buy a code that would give you access to the full set of features—you can do this directly from your QuickTime application, which you probably used to edit the video clip in the first place.
Open the video in question in QuickTime, then click File > Save As. In the list of options under the title “Export,” bypass all those that say “Movie to” and select one of the “Sound to” options. There will be a few options for sound files—explaining and suggesting from them is beyond the scope of this article, but if you select one and then change your mind, it’s easy to convert between them in iTunes.
Click Save, and once the export is complete, you’ll be able to open your new sound file in the music manager of your choice (iTunes, for most of us) and burn your CD there. If you don’t have QuickTime Pro, there are a couple other more roundabout ways to extract your audio:
• For Mac users, you can convert video to audio in GarageBand. Open GarageBand and click New Project. You can ignore the other options (what instruments to use, etc.) as they won’t be relevant. Then simply drag the video you want to use onto the application. It will take a few moments to break the file down into thumbnails, which you won’t need to bother with. Actually, you’ll want to delete the “Movie” track (go to the Track menu and select Delete Track), while keeping the “Movie Sound” track. Then from the Share menu, you can select Send Song to iTunes, select the format, and voilà.
• If you’re a Windows user, you might try downloading a free program called AoA Audio Extractor from www.aoamedia.com/audioextractor.htm. The free version will suffice for our purposes:extracting audio from video. So no need to invest $30 in the Platinum—although, having a “Karaoke Song Recorder” can never be a bad thing. But with the basic program, there will be no complicated exporting or “saving as” for you! Honestly, this project can be either easy or difficult. A host of variables can influence the process: What kind of video file do you have? What kind of audio file do you want? What kind of computer do you use? How much of a Luddite are you? But hopefully this brief introduction will be enough to start you on the path. Just don’t write me for tech support!
