I Can’t Sing At All!
Dylan had his first audition for (hopefully) a college music scholarship.
College scholarships have been the goal for Dylan since he started singing. He didn’t actually know that was the goal until his voice teacher started saying, “You’ve got to keep your eyes on the prize.”
The “prize” is a scholarship. So the audition was supposed to be a time when Dylan most needed to sing as perfectly as possible.
He woke up four hours before the audition and went straight into the bathroom. He was coughing and spitting. He’d felt a bit under the weather the day before but on Audition Day, he was sick. I mean, he could barely breathe without choking on mucus. He blew his nose for almost an hour and it didn’t make a difference.
But he’d traveled hours to audition, and there was no option. He had to sing.
Several months ago, Dylan’s voice teacher suggested that he go to a lesson when he was sick. The voice teacher had shown Dylan a few tricks to use when he was ill, ways to help his voice even during a bad cold. So there was no need to text the teacher for tricks and tips.
He had to sing.
And so he did. I dropped him off and went to a local drug store for Dayquil. I’d love to say this was my idea, but we never use cold medications – so my mom had to suggest it. I’m not sure I ever would have considered it otherwise.
Dylan got dressed in his shirt and tie. He went to the welcome meeting, and I snuck in with the Dayquil, which he drank quickly. In less than half an hour, Dylan was actually smiling. He wasn’t congestion-free, but he was no longer in severe agony.
Then he had about 20 minutes to warm up and practice.
“This is the one chance I have,” he said after a few attempts at singing, “and I can’t sing at all!”
“Have some more water,” I said. “Keep practicing. The more you practice now, the better you will sound at the audition. Just do the best you can.”
“But there are so many notes I just can’t hit!” he wailed. “I can hit them every other day, but not today.”
“Then concentrate on the notes that you can hit,” I told him.
His accompanist joined him and I left the room. Dylan practiced his two songs to the best of his ability.
Then he sang them again for the audition, to the best of his ability.
I snuck to a spot on the floor, outside the audition room door, and recorded him. He sounded incredible. His first song was absolutely perfect. He was straining in his second song but, because he refused to use the “excuse” of being sick, so it just sounded like the song was a touch too high for his range.
Sadly, they will never know that his range is substantially higher than what he shared.
But this was only the first school, and he has other auditions scheduled. He doesn’t even know if he’s been accepted anywhere yet.
Still, it would have been nice for him to sing well and be well during his first attempt.