'Velvet Singer' Software Journals & Organizes Auditions

When you are both a working classically-trained singer and a working computer programmer, what are you going to do in your admittedly small amount of spare time?  Create a software package geared toward the needs of singers, of course.  And that is exactly what William Bennett, a Chicago-based tenor and computer whiz, has done.

His software product, "Velvet Singer" (recently made available at www.velvetsinger.com) has features that classical singers, and those aspiring to join them, will love.  And yet its features seem to be attractive enough to give the two most well-known musical performer products, "ActorTrack" software (www.holdonlog.com/pages/software.html) and the "YAP Tracker" web-based service (www.yaptracker.com), a run for their proverbial money.  In truth, singers who work in both the musical and theatrical worlds may find features in all of these products useful in their careers.

All three products offer tracking of those all-important expenses that are incurred during the audition process.  And that may be where the similarities end.   "YAP Tracker," a service with an annual fee, emphasizes what auditions are coming up, offering comprehensive listings of different types of performing opportunities through its web-based format.  "ActorTrack," a product with a one-time fee, allows the performer to log auditions and callbacks, track their bookings and manage their industry contacts, but offers no help concerning the substance of the audition itself, either what to sing or where to be heard.

"Velvet Singer," another product with a one-time fee, also allows the performer to keep a journal of auditions attended and contracts offered, and to track the history of such details as the companies or shows approached, selections performed, who listened to the audition, who accompanied the audition on the piano, and what were the results.  But its most distinctive feature seems to be its searchable listings of over 2,500 opera arias, by title, role, opera name, composer, language and "fach" (that singers' term that differentiates a "light lyric tenor" from a "spinto tenor," for example).

So, conceivably, one could use "YAP Tracker" to find an audition, use "Velvet Singer" to decide what to perform (assuming one wants to sing an opera selection), and use "Velvet Singer" or "ActorTrack" for a step-by-step guide through the audition process.  One could use either of these products to generate and print audition-based reports, depending on which aspects of the audition process are deemed more important.  "ActorTrack" is the only one of the three offering a section on "booked jobs," though according to Bennett, "Velvet Singer" will have one soon.

None of these three offer a database of musical theater or operetta selections, which would seem to be an oversight from the buyer's comprehensive career perspective.  However, the aria database available through "Velvet Singer" is certainly a great start.  Finding an opera selection (beyond thumbing through the most readily available aria book) is probably the most daunting hurdle for most vocally ready performers to overcome.

According to Bennett, "Velvet is about doing auditions and keeping a journal of how you did….Velvet will help a singer start to finish."  For the future, he is working on including a Facebook Viewer to help integrate contacts tracking, and integrating with Google Calendar to make scheduling smoother.  "Velvet Singer" is already linked to Google Maps, to make finding audition locations easier.

The overall point of the software is for singers to gain a vital competitive edge on the competition "by staying organized and stress-free though the audition process."  Now that's an important aspect of any performer's career management process, whether singer, actor, dancer or triple-threat.  And "Velvet Singer" may just be the right software for the market.  It is certainly a welcome addition for those stage performers who are the more classically minded of the bunch.

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