The Voice Audition Experience

[BogoGog24]

Have you ever auditioned for The Voice? Share your experience here!

 

Many people asked me to share mine, so here is my experience:

 

I auditioned this past July for Season 8 in New Jersey at the MetLife stadium. Basically what you do is you pick a day and time that you're going to audition. You don't have to wait in line for hours or days like Idol. You arrive at the stadium, show ID, go through security, get a wristband, and then wait in a line. After about 15 minutes they told us to go up these escalators and ramps to get inside the stadium. We waited in another line for about 20 minutes and then were led to the holding room, which is where you do the majority of waiting. I was there for about maybe 40 minutes or so. They call up groups of 10 people and you're led to the audition room. We had to wait for the previous group to finish. If they want to hear a second song, they will ask those people to stay behind and if they want you for a callback, they will give you a red piece of paper. There was one girl in the group before mine that got a red paper.

 

Then we went into the room and there's one judge/producer. You have to sing in front of them and also the other 9 people in your group. You get to sing a verse and chorus of 1 song. For the sake of time, she didn't have time to give us any feedback. All she said was that they had raised the bar very high for next season so they wouldn't be taking any of us. 

 

For those interested in learning more about the audition process, you can check out my 3 part video series on YouTube about the experience: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUycBB9OLmCsclQrp7ZAorX0T8X2FnEqR

 

All in all, I think it was a good experience and something that any aspiring singer should do if they get the chance. If anything, it is just more auditioning experience. I was glad that I did it even though I didn't advance. In total I was only at the stadium for about 2.5 hours which isn't a long time at all. They were very organized as well. I've heard some other shows aren't as good with their audition process.

[blueray]

Thanks for posting this. I imagine those that get through still do a lot before they actually face the tv judges.

[BogoGog24]

Thanks for posting this. I imagine those that get through still do a lot before they actually face the tv judges.

Yeah, it's an open call audition, then a producer audition, then you fly out to LA and audition for the producers there, and then it's the blinds.

 

Sometimes contestants with more notoriety are contacted to audition for the show and skip the open cattle call part of the audition process. In an interview with Cole Vosbury, he said it takes about 3 months to make it to the blinds.

[photo fox]

A long radio station interview with James David Carter (tall country guy from Georgia on S7 Team Blake).  There's quite a bit about him and his career, of course, but I'm posting it here because he talks a lot about the blind audition process, the sequestering, etc.  According to this, the producers told him what song he was singing for the blinds, which is kind of crazy when you think about how much weight judges sometimes give to that song choice.

 

[BogoGog24]

Yeah I've heard of producers choosing songs for the blinds. For example, I know that Danielle Bradbery from S4 was going to sing "So Small" by Carrie Underwood but the producers thought she should sing "Mean" by Taylor Swift and that was what she ended up going with. I don't know what factors go into producers choosing certain songs, at least in Danielle's case maybe they knew she liked Taylor and thought a Taylor song would work better because she was younger or maybe the contestants present a list of a few possible choices and the producers choose the one they like best.

[kj4ever]

My friend's daughter tried out at the Chicago cattle call and made it past the first round.  She only had two songs prepared, so when she went in to audition for the second set (she said there were like 8 people from the show in that one) she sang her second song.  They then asked her to sing another one that was a bit of a different genre and she choked.  She's only 17 and was devastated, but  she should be proud that she got that far being so young and out of so many thousands of people.  

 

I think it did say somewhere in her paperwork to have 2 songs ready and an extra, and she missed the extra :(

[rollerblade]

According to this, the producers told him [James David Carter] what song he was singing for the blinds, which is kind of crazy when you think about how much weight judges sometimes give to that song choice.

 

Well, seeing his blinds was a 4-chair, and Blake even said it's the best country audition in 7 seasons... I'd say the producers aced the song choice! :D

 

Then again, I'm kinda skeptical about the Blinds - the singers that got picked are probably ultimately the ones producers wanted for the show. Only question mark was which judge the singers get. Or maybe that was predetermined too!

[kj4ever]

Well, seeing his blinds was a 4-chair, and Blake even said it's the best country audition in 7 seasons... I'd say the producers aced the song choice! :D

 

Then again, I'm kinda skeptical about the Blinds - the singers that got picked are probably ultimately the ones producers wanted for the show. Only question mark was which judge the singers get. Or maybe that was predetermined too!

Amy Whitcomb used to have a Vlog about her Voice experiences.  She said that for the blinds they are given a list of 100 songs and they rank them in order from 1 to 100 - 1 being the song they want to sing and 100 being their least favorite.  The producers then give them a song from that list to sing.  It might be their favorite, or it might be not so much.