Auditions in Australia

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 36, 22 March 1929, Page 25

Auditions in Australia

y.N FEW years ago "auditions" implied, to most of those who had personal experience of them, uncomfortable quarters of an hour in cold, empty rooms, where bored men thumped worn-out pianos, whilst hard-eyed managers looked scornfully on. Now an increasing number of people have quite a different experience. The actual procedure to be followed by those who want to have their talents tried out does not vary much, whether it is a musical, dramatic, or variety audition, or a speaking voice test. The applicant turns up at the appointed time, duly armed, as the case may be, with his or her roll of music, trombone or scrip, and is ushered into a stidio where a red light over the door signifies to the initiate that the microphone is "alive," though a closed circuit only is being used. This means that sounds from the studio pass through the microphone and so to the eontrol room, but instead of being broadcast they are merely passed back on the wires to a pair of headphones in the control room itself. On these headphones a tactful member of the staff listens to the test, for the microphone has its own exigencies, and a voice or an instrument that might be beautiful in a hall only too often fails to pass the microphone test. A second hearing is sometimes allowed for nervousness can play havoe with ability, and even hardened performers are often unable to face the microphone without a qualm. Talkers particularly can be enormously helped by a few words of expert advice on inflection and the pitch of the voice, and a special list of hints is sent to all of them who pass the test. SOME, of course, in particular those with a taste for novelty, thoroughly enjoy the whole affair, in fact, in early days there was reason to believe that many people without the faintest hope of ever bursting into the broadcast programmes, came for auditions for the fun of the thing and nothing more. But the "auditor" who had spent weary hours listening to their efforts would at least reap his reward now and again when someone possessing real talent, even to himself or herself unknown, came into his net, or when he got a letter such as that the gentleman who said: "I must a¥so thank you for the kind way you received me, you must make many friends there.’ When the licenses expire in July next, there will be stored in the archives of the company, reports dealing with 20,000 individual tests. ;