Read a line you have never seen, sing it once, scored the way a panel scores it.
The prepared piece is almost never where my singers lose an audition. The sight-reading line is. You get about a minute with music you have never seen, then one take, no restarts. Most students spend it naming notes left to right, the slowest way to read music. Find Do from the key signature, hear the tonic triad, and read the line as scale degrees. Solfège is what lets you sing an interval before you have finished identifying it.
Every read is graded 2 pitch points and 2 rhythm points per measure, out of 20, the honor choir audition rubric. Rhythm is anchored to your own first note, so a slow start costs nothing. Chapters 9 through 12 will not pass you below 14 out of 20.
Twelve chapters, 8 to 18 lessons each. The first three never show a staff: you echo Do and Re, then Do and Mi, then Do Mi So. Note names, ledger lines and key signatures arrive in Chapter 4, once the sound is attached to the syllable. Chapter 12 reads the honor choir audition archive profiles, 2013 through 2024.
This does not replace a teacher. It replaces the twenty minutes I cannot spend beside one student while the room waits. A flat note held for three seconds is three seconds of practicing being flat, so the verdict arrives on the note. Pair it with daily tonal memory work before an All-State or regional honor choir audition. Chapter 1 is free and needs no account.
Written by Colby Hawkins, a public school choir director and founder of Honor Choir Academy.