My experience with The Voice

This summer I decided that I wanted to try out for my first television show. I chose to audition for The Voice because of all the singing shows, it seemed to be the most professional. I went to http://www.nbcthevoice.com/ and registered my Artist Account. After filling out all of the information there, I was asked to chose an audition date and time. 

One week before my audition occurred, I received my Artist Audition Pass (pictured below).

I arrived two hours early to my audition. If you plan to audition for The Voice in the future, I strongly recommend that you arrive at least two hours before your scheduled audition time.

Once I was inside the Convention Center, I was placed in a large room that seated around 200 other auditioners. After waiting a grueling 3 hours, I finally moved on to wait outside the audition room. They put us in groups of ten and the ten of us entered the audition room with one casting director. She chose one person at random to come up and sing a verse and a chorus of their song. When I heard the other singers in my room, I'll admit I was a little intimidated! They were all so good!

I got up and sang my rendition of Bill Wither's "Ain't No Sunshine". Afterwards, she thanked everyone for coming to the audition and asked that I stay behind. I was so surprised. She told me that she would call me by the end of the day to let me know if I'd gotten a callback.

Sure enough, at 6:30, I received my call. I was ecstatic, to say the least. That was a Saturday and I was scheduled to come back to Memphis that Thursday with 3-4 current songs prepared in full. Current was difficult for me. All of the songs that fit my voice are old. I really struggled with song selection. In the end, I chose to sing Florence + The Machine's "Dog Days are Over", Lady Gaga's acoustic "Pokerface" and Adele's "Rolling in the Deep". I'll admit, I was a little uneasy with my choosing an Adele song, but it was one of the few current songs that fit my voice.

I arrived at the callback and was ushered into a small waiting room. After about 30 minutes, I went back into the room to do my callback. In the room there were two casting directors, a sound technician and a cameraman. I sang only two of my songs before the female casting director stopped me and told me that although I did a great job, she wasn't going to send me to the next round. I politely thanked them for their time, and left. 

Although the results weren't what I'd hoped for, the experience that I gained from auditioning for The Voice was once in a lifetime. If you want to audition, all I can say is be prepared and GO FOR IT!

xx,

Elizabeth Prior