Expert: J. Spyder Isaacson - 12/9/2007

Question
QUESTION: hi. I am in the talent contest at school but am only allowed 2 minutes to perform and my song lasts over 3 minutes how can i shorten it without making it sound bad?

ANSWER: I empathize with you on this one - most musical auditions require only 16 bars of a song, which can be a REAL challenge.  In your case, since you didn't provide the name of the song, I'll just give you some general advice.

The best way to shorten the song is to cut out the intro or the ending.  Lots of songs, especially showtunes, have brief intros or extended endings - "Show Business" for an example of the former, "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" for the latter.  Other than that, simply cutting out an entire verse works quite well.

One thing that's risky (in my mind, too risky) is to speed up the pace of the song.  This can work sometimes by turning a ballad into more of a rock or swing-style tune, but more often it just ruins the feel of the song.

This is a tricky business, so if you need further help, just let me know.

Break a leg!

-- Spyder


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: hi again the name of the song is out of reach by gabrielle i also have been told that i have to sing with two guitarists who are learning the song so i still dont now how to shorten the song when these two people are trying tolearn the song its in less than two weeks time and they are finding it hard to learn the chords without worrying about how to cut it down

Answer
Sadly, at this point I'm running out of advice, especially under the circumstances you've described.  Additionally, I'm not familiar with the song itself.

The last piece of advice I could really give you is that if there are multiple verses, use the one(s) you think are critical to the song, and if there are repeated choruses, try to reduce them to one.

Lastly, let whomever is running the talent show know of the difficulties you're running into. Sometimes, they might be willing to help and, maybe, to negotiate a compromise.

I'm sorry I can't provide any better advice than this, but hopefully this will point you in the right direction.

Good luck!

- S.