I was notified of a local theater production hosting a staged reading and I wanted to audition. The auditions aren’t for another few weeks, but as part of the audition, I need to sing 32 bars of a modern musical song and then give a conflicting one minute monologue. I can handle the monologue, but what the hell is a bar?
In: 5
A bar is a measure of music. In music that’s 4/4 time, a bar will equal 4 beats. That being said, from what I learned in my vocal performance degree, if they’re asking you to prepare 32 bars, they don’t need you to literally count out the bars, they usually want approximately 45 seconds to a minute of singing. In old musical theatre (Rodgers and Hammerstein era) 32 bars would be a verse and chorus and basically come out to 1 minute of music.
TL;DR prepare a minute of music for your audition and you should be good. Break a leg!
Latest Answers