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🚀 Joining info - 2024/25

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Welcome!

Thinking of joining Big Band Society? We’d love to have you. Whether you’re a fresher or a refresher, we’re open to anyone and everyone who wants to come and play. Here’s everything you need to know about us.

We’re a group of students who have a passion for all things jazz. We meet every Friday evening for chilled out rehearsals interspersed with drinks and chat – a great way to start the weekend on a relaxing, jazzy note. Big Band Society places an emphasis on community with an inclusive, welcoming and supportive space each week for everyone to come together and enjoy hanging out, whilst also making great music. We organise a variety of socials throughout the term, from pub sardines and nature walks to lazer tag and karaoke, making the most of what Bristol’s got to offer.

Our two incredible bands feature the most talented musicians in the university, and we regularly play gigs throughout the city. Here’s some of the great stuff you can expect to get stuck into with us:

  • Gigs! (lots of them) – highlights include sell-out gigs at The Fleece, Bristol Beacon, and others. We usually aim for 1 or 2 per term, with opportunities provided for paid small-band gigs in-between.
  • Socials – as mentioned above, we run lots of varied socials throughout the year! Socials are a great way to get to know others in the society, and we run a mix of alcoholic and non-alcoholic events 🙂 A massive social positive of Big Band is our “family” scheme (especially nearer the start of the year) which helps introduce everyone to each other.
  • Rehearsals – these are the staple of Big Band. However your week’s been, you can rest easy knowing that come Friday you’ll be relaxing with all your mates, playing some cheeky refreshing jazz and maybe even sippin a cold bevvy at balloon bar 😍 it’s what you love to see, and what you love to hear 👂
  • Tours and excursions – What could possibly be better than playing jazz with your friends? How about playing jazz with your friends whilst enjoying being situated in a beautiful European city in the peak of summer? Previous tour locations include Bruges (Belgium), Bonn (Germany), Barcelona (promise we do go to places that don’t just begin with b) and Lake Garda (Italy). Another massive highlight of the Big Band year is Battle of the Big Bands, which incorporates bands from across the south west – this is a day trip full of music and fun.
  • Jazz – lots of jazz. Enough said. Side note – if you play an instrument but haven’t dabbled in Jazz much before, don’t fear! We’d love you to play/audition anyway! Lots of our members fall into this category, and we are accepting of all types of musician ❀

We have two bands:

The Bristol Hornstars:

  • Hornstars is our fully auditioned band. Rehearsing in the Stephenson Room (in the Richmond building) this band is smaller but tends to take on more challenging repertoire and consistently delivers some of the best big band performances in Bristol and the surrounding area. Highlights of this year included exclusive gigs at The Canteen, Old Market Assembly, along with producing professional recordings (which are coming Soonℱ)

BUJO (Bristol University Jazz Orchestra)

  • BUJO is our larger band. The rhythm section and singers are auditioned but aside from that no audition is necessary – if you play a horn, just turn up! We rehearse in the Carpenter Room every Friday. While BUJO’s rehearsals may be a little more relaxed than Hornstars’, the quality of music is certainly no less and the band has achieved a lot this year. Most notably being crowned the winners of the South West Battle of the Big Bands 🏆 !

While a little band rivalry can be motivating, we are ultimately one big Big Band family. We celebrate this every week by coming together after rehearsal for a drink down in the Balloon Bar (in the Richmond Building).

How do I join?

Membership is, and will always be, free! If you’d like to be in Hornstars, you’ll need to audition (read more below). Otherwise, just turn up to rehearsal on a Friday and we’ll be overjoyed to see you!

Here are the steps to joining our society:

1. Register your email

Register your email and name using the box below – this will help us to keep in touch with you. We’ll send you important updates throughout the year including things like audition information, links to groupchats, gig dates/info, tour information etc.

2. Register via Bristol SU

Use the button below to find our page on the SU website. You’ll need to log in with your uni account, then look for the button that says “join this group” or similar.

Our SU page

Once you’ve registered, you should get a welcome email from us. Hopefully we won’t end up in your spam, but it’s always worth a check 😉

3. Follow us on social media

Our instagram account is the main source of public info, but we’re also active on X and Facebook. We also have a Spotify – tasty stuff coming soon! Our public socials will mainly feature info about gigs, events, tour, etc. Find us using the buttons below:

Instagram Facebook Spotify

We also have a super-secret, super-spicy, insiders-only private instagram account that contains extra cheeky info for members of the society – you should hopefully have a link in your inbox if you registered with us above 😉 

4. Come and say hi!

If you play a horn, just turn up to rehearsal! It’s at 17:30 every week in the Richmond building – head to the Carpenter room on floor 2. Our first rehearsal will be on Friday the 27th of September. See you there!

Auditions

This section contains a lot of information. The audition process has also changed slightly from past years, so make sure to read the following information carefully.

If you would like to be in Hornstars, play in either of the rhythm sections (so bass, keys, drums, or guitar), or sing, you’ll need to audition. Unfortunately it has to be done – we obviously can’t be having unlimited drum players!

This year, instrumental auditions will take place between Wednesday the 18th and Thursday the 26th of September.

The most important thing to remember is that we’re nice, friendly people (we’ve been told) and we want you to feel happy and relaxed. This is a fun and social society, so don’t stress, but do take the audition process seriously – there’s some tough competition!

Audition standard

First off, it’s worth mentioning that the standard to play in our big bands is high, and the places we have are limited for rhythm and vocals in both BUJO and Hornstars. Nobody has a guaranteed place, even if you’ve played in our bands the year before.

As such, we do unfortunately have to turn away some very talented players each year. However, the bands change every year as people graduate and new members join the society, so come back next year and please audition again!

With that said, if you’re on the fence about auditioning (especially if you’re a horn player) – do it! You might surprise yourself, and it’s good experience. If you’re a horn player, you’re always welcome in BUJO 💖, so you might as well give it a go!

Instruments

For clarity, here is a full list of instruments that we accept auditions for:

Hornstars only
  • Trumpet
  • Trombone
  • Alto Sax
  • Tenor Sax
  • Bari Sax
BUJO and Hornstars
  • Vocals
  • Drums
  • Bass guitar
  • Guitar
  • Keys

Logistics and timings

We have a lot of auditions to get through! For this reason it is VITAL that you are there and ready to begin your audition (instrument out + warmed up) by the time slot you have chosen. We will have warm-up rooms available for you to use on the day, and recommend that you turn up 20-30 minutes prior to your allocated time.

If you’re going to be late on the day, text us (contact details will be provided) – but we can’t offer any guarantees that we’ll be able to rearrange. We have limited overflow slots available at the end of the week, but will prioritise these for students that are unable to attend their instrument’s allotted day.

For some auditions, the audition length will be shorter than it has been in the past. This is due to the high number of signups, limited room booking space, and availability of the band/experts. We have times to keep to, and in parts of your audition you may be asked to stop so that we can move on to the next section. Please realise this is not indicative of your standard, it’s just so we can get through everybody, and we may need to be fairly ruthless about it. Thank you for your understanding! If you’re going to need a little more time to set up (e.g. leftie drummer), also drop us an email so we don’t forget!

Panel experts

In our audition process we like to bring in experts on each instrument to help the panel differentiate between high-level auditionees. This also helps us as an external person to the society will be less susceptible to biases and means the process overall should be fairer. Most of these experts will be there in person on the day, however it’s looking like it’ll be difficult for this to be the case for everybody. Although not ideal, this means that some auditions may be recorded so that we can send them to an external expert for their opinion. Please get in touch if you are not happy with this, and we’ll try to sort another solution.

Gender

We know that jazz generally is a male-dominated space and understand that for women or non-binary identifying people it may be more intimidating than it is for men. One of our goals this year is to have more diverse bands promoting equality and fairness. We aim to have at least one woman/NB identifying person on the auditions panel at all times to try to make everyone feel more comfortable and to combat unconscious biases. We would love to see more women and NB identifying people involved this year. So please get involved! If you have any questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Audition format

The process is different for vocal and instrumental auditions – expand the relevant toggle for full info.

We’re very aware that lots of people catch fresher’s flu near the beginning of term – which can be a particular issue for vocalists trying to audition! Vocal auditions are also the most popular (and competitive) auditions, and we’re always grateful to receive lots of them! Unfortunately this does mean we have to turn a lot of people down every year 🙁

As such, we’re introducing a new two-round process for vocalists which we believe will make the experience fairer and more streamlined.

Stage 1: Video submission

Stage 1 audition submissions will close at midnight on Sunday the 22nd of September.

For the first stage, you are expected to send us a recording of you performing an own-choice song. This can be anything you like, but we’d recommend choosing a song from one of the following genres: Jazz, Swing, Big Band, Funk, Soul, RnB, or similar – obviously we’re looking for candidates that are a good fit for the type of music we perform!

Your submission can be unaccompanied or accompanied, and we recommend that you keep the length around 3 minutes – we may not be able to listen to all of your recording if it’s longer than this!

We’ll aim to let you know if you’ve been selected for the next stage by Friday the 27th of September.

To submit a video, scroll down.

Stage 2: in-person

We’ll aim to accept as many applicants as possible through to the second stage.

To avoid fresher’s flu and give the bands a couple of weeks to learn the tracks, we’ll hold the second stage a bit later in the term – we hope this will allow you to recover from fresher’s week and give you a bit more preparation time.

Second-stage auditions will be held in-person in front of a panel we’ll expect you to perform three songs:

  1. An unaccompanied own-choice song, open to you in style and genre. This should aim to be around 2 minutes long. This should be different to the one you sang in stage 1.
  2. An accompanied song, chosen from one of the below options:
    • Superstition – Stevie Wonder
    • Ain’t No Sunshine – Bill Withers
    • Sunny – Bobby Hebb
    • Golden – Jill Scott
  3. An accompanied song, chosen from:
    • Tea for Two – Doris Day
    • Misty – Errol Garner
    • Fly Me to the Moon – Frank Sinatra
    • All of Me – Billie Holiday

Accompaniments will be provided by our amazing jam band đŸ„°đŸ˜, which will be a small rhythm section (bass, keys, drums). We’d prefer you to sing them in the original keys if possible so the band knows what to expect – if this doesn’t work for you, please let us know when booking your slot. You’re welcome to use any lyrics/sheet music that you want.

All other instrumental auditions will be conducted in-person in front of a panel. These auditions will be structured as follows:

  1. An unaccompanied piece of your choosing
    • Aim for roughly two minutes – if it’s too long, we might have to cut you short for the sake of time.
    • Any style or genre is welcome, but we’d recommend picking a piece from the following genres: Jazz, Swing, Big Band, Funk, Soul, RnB, or similar – this helps us to get a better feel for what you’d be like in one of our bands!
    • With that said, if you’re new to jazz or big band – don’t stress! Play to your strengths, and be honest with us. If you’re a strong musician and we’re confident you can adapt, there’s no reason we can’t make it work. Many of last year’s band auditioned with more classical pieces and did so successfully – so don’t feel you have to try and learn something completely new in the first couple weeks of term just for your audition!
  2. A short sight reading exercise
    • This exercise will use a short extract taken from a big band chart.
    • You’ll be given thirty seconds to prepare.
    • This will be tricky, but that’s intentional. Again, try not to stress too much – we’re interested more in your approach and confidence as a player rather than the final performance. We’re not expecting perfection!
  3. An improvised jam
    • This section of the audition is your chance to show off! You’ll pick a song from our “jam playlist” to play along with our amazing jam band đŸ„°đŸ˜. This part of the audition is your main opportunity to show us your musicality, your ability to play alongside other musicians, and your improvisational skills – basically a musical vibe check x
    • The jam playlist can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/16G52F1BEfN0FoJurM48yU
    • If you’ve never done a jam before (or don’t know what one is), don’t panic! We’ve linked some explainers in the FAQ, which we would recommend giving a thorough read/watch.
    • This part should last around 3 minutes, which for most tunes will be about 3 repeats of the chart. We’ll expect you to play the head (tune) the first time, improvise in the middle, and return to the head the final time.
    • If you’re auditioning for drums or bass, you’re not expected to play the head.
    • If you haven’t memorised the head, that’s fine. There will be real books available at the audition, but we’d recommend bringing your own music just in case. If you don’t have a copy of a real book and would like one to prepare with, get in touch.

Audition here!

Vocals submission (UoB sign-in required)
Book an instrumental audition

Got questions? Having tech issues? No free slots? Need to rearrange? Drop us an email at contact@bigbandsoc.co.uk and we’ll do our best to sort any issues ASAP.

FAQs

A traditional Big Band has 5 Saxophones (2 Altos, 2 Tenors and a Baritone), 4 Trombones and 4 Trumpets as well as a Rhythm Section and often a singer. The Bristol Hornstars, our fully auditioned band, follows this format with one player per part. However, BUJO our band with unauditioned horns boasts around 40 members each year.
This varies year to year and is dependent on the Conductor of the band. However, expect a variety from old swing standards to modern pop and funk tunes that you will love and hopefully in some cases recognise.

In short, sadly no. This is due to Big Band parts not being written for your instruments however you can still be involved in jazz in Bristol. JazzFunkSoul Society is a great way to get involved. They host weekly jam sessions where you can gain some experience playing live.

If you’re on the fence – just do it. There’s no downside to auditioning, and it’s good experience. The general standard of Hornstars is high, but don’t let this dissuade you – each year is different and the audition is at least fun. If you don’t get in you can always and we recommend that you join BUJO. Many of the top players at the University started their journeys in BUJO. For BUJO we recommend that you are at least around “grade 4” on your instrument however many members of BUJO are well beyond grade 8 and some are still learning their ways around the instruments so please do come.

In Jazz, a jam is when a group of musicians give an improvised performance. For your audition you will be expected to play “the head” (the melody) of a piece from our set-list and then take an improvised solo over the chord changes. You will be accompanied by a live band. This is your chance to show your musicality and ability to slot in with other musicians as well as to improvise. The fundamental element of jazz music.

For more info, this video’s pretty helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aCqoXF791U

As mentioned above, this has previously been a barrier for vocal auditions – we’re introducing a two-step audition process this year to help accommodate. For instrumentalists, we hope that fresher’s flu won’t impact your audition as much, but will try to bear it in mind provided you make us aware of this. Ultimately, it is down to your performance in the audition.

We want you to have a relaxed and enjoyable audition experience – if there is anything we can do to make you more comfortable, just let us know on the booking form. If there are any accessibility, musical, or timing adjustments you need, we’re all ears – we just ask that you make these requirements known to us at the point of booking the audition. If there’s anything you need to let us know, you can always reach us at contact@bigbandsoc.co.uk.

We have rooms allocated for warming up – you should have between 10-20 minutes depending on timings. It’s worth noting that these are not factored into the schedule, so the time you book will be the start time for your audition (i.e in the room and ready to play), not the time you should show up at. We’d recommend getting there about 20-30 minutes before the start time for your audition.

YES. We are going to make an effort this year to provide useful feedback, with expert opinions.

YES. Actually, we’d really encourage you to! Especially if you’re auditioning on a competitive instrument, it may well improve your chances of getting in 🙂

Got more questions?

Please feel free to get in touch! Just drop us an email at contact@bigbandsoc.co.uk and we’ll get back to you ASAP.

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