The word of the week: Opportunity

I am tempted to say that the event of which I am about to write is a “once in a lifetime” Opportunity. With a little reflection, though, I realize that the truth of that statement is completely dependent on how active one is, and how much one works to make opportunities present themselves.

This Saturday, I, with DoubleShot!, will be auditioning for a show called “The Sing Off.” It’s a competition that pits a cappella groups against each other American Idol style, each hoping that they’ll come away with the record deal that the show promises to the winning group. Similar to the other reality competition shows that are currently popular, there will be a cattle-call day of auditions. This is a very unattractive way of spending a Saturday… so we’re not going to. Since the producers of the show knew of DoubleShot! since the very beginning, we’ll be auditioning directly for them, skipping the preliminary audition completely. As we’ve seen in recent music history, reality TV like this can spawn careers for the participants, even if they don’t win. What’s the saying? “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” That’s what we’re banking on. We’re not even sure that we’ll make it beyond the audition. But, if we do, this will be a huge spot of nation-wide visibility for us. “As seen on NBC’s ‘The Sing Off’” is a phrase that will carry a lot of weight soon.

If we do make it, it’ll mean putting life outside of the competition on hold between Thanksgiving and Christmas for the shooting of the show. This is good for the aforementioned reason. It is also bad. It would all but halt the progress that we make on our music and stage show (aside from the songs that we compete with). We also stand to confuse our audience, current and future, as we would be performing with only three of the six current group members. The chances that the other three guys could get away from their jobs for almost a month to shoot this show in L.A. are practically nill. Luckily, if you offer a serious musician the chance to be seen on national television doing the thing that he or she loves, they’re probably going to be much more inclined to join the group, even if only temporarily.

I’m excited about this coming Saturday. I have many different emotions rolling around: fear of rejection, joy that we could be on national TV, sadness that I already know that it can’t be done with all of the guys that got us to this point, anger that our preparation level is not what it should be, etc. It will be very interesting to see how this audition will shape the future. The only thing I know for certain is that I’m in it to win it.

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