Updated November 16, 2023
We’ll have placement evaluations at Braun Music Center in June, 2024, on dates to be announced. The evaluations are easy and fun, and they give our faculty a chance to get to know you and your level of musical experience.
Don’t worry if you’ve never played jazz before, or if you’ve never tried to improvise. We’ll help you to learn to do everything!
Your Giant Steps Day Camp placement evaluation will take about 20 minutes and will consist of the following:
- Instrumental technique. Prepare to play a piece of music, anything you enjoy playing: a piece from your school band, an étude from an instruction book, a song, or even just some scales. You may bring sheet music or play it from memory.
- Learning by ear. The faculty will play very simple musical phrases and ask you to play them back by ear, as best you can. Learning by ear is an important part of learning to play jazz, and it’s one of the things we work on a lot at Giant Steps Day Camp.
- Reading music. We’ll ask you to sight-read an easy piece of music. This will help our faculty choose the optimal music for everyone at Giant Steps Day Camp.
- Improvisation. If you’ve improvised before, please let us hear you do it! The faculty will ask you to improvise to a recorded accompaniment for a little bit.
Once you’ve registered for Giant Steps Day Camp, we’ll contact you via email with instructions on how to schedule an appointment.
If you’re not available for placement evaluations on the dates when they’re announced, you may create and submit an audio or video of yourself playing our evaluation music. Please email us at [email protected] if you’re not available for the in-person placement evaluations.
