Audition Requirements | Royal Academy of Music

Please see Filling In Your Application For UK Conservatoires via UCAS for further assistance with this process.

These requirements are for students auditioning to start their studies at the Academy in September 2023. Until specified otherwise, these requirements also apply for auditions in future years. Some audition requirements may change: please check back here regularly. You are welcome to contact the Admissions Team (admissions@ram.ac.uk) or the department administrator if you have any queries.

3 October deadline, 6pm UK time:
deadline for all candidates for London or Video auditions to submit the UCAS Conservatoires application. (See the Your Application page for deadlines for New York and for São Paolo)

Then:

28 October deadline:

London in-person candidates: deadline to create your profile in the Acceptd portal, with your referee contact details, and any written requirements required for your course choice (see below).
Video candidates: deadline to upload audition recordings (including the spoken English introduction) into the Acceptd portal, details are on our video auditions page. You will need to create a profile in the Acceptd portal into which you upload your audition recording, the list of all the works in your programme, any written requirements (see below) and your spoken English introduction.
Undergraduates should upload a separate unedited video for each piece.
Postgraduates should upload a single unedited video of their complete programme.

Guitar Audition

Audition repertoire

Undergraduates should present a contrasted programme of three pieces from the following list.
Postgraduates should present a contrasted programme of four pieces from the following list.

a contrapuntal work written between c1500-1750
a work from the 19th or 20th century in 1st movement sonata form
a theme with variations (from any period)
a work, or movement(s), from the late 20th or early 21st century
a dance movement (from any period)

In most cases live guitar auditions last around 30 minutes. If you are invited to perform at interview, as time is limited you may be interrupted before you have performed a complete piece.

Undergraduate applicants

You may be asked to have a subsequent interview with one of the undergraduate academic staff, during which you can discuss your study plans and may be asked some questions about a short extract of music, and be asked to take some aural skills assessments consisting of a sight-singing test and some of the following:

singing the middle notes in a chord
identification of intervals
sight reading of rhythms
sight reading of two simultaneous different rhythms, to be sung and clapped.

Sorry, we cannot issue specimen tests.

Postgraduate applicants

You may be asked to have a subsequent interview with one of the postgraduate programme tutors where you can discuss your study plans.

Written requirements

Applicants for the Master of Music (MMus), Professional Diploma (ProfDip) and Advanced Diploma (Performance) courses need to submit written requirements, please view these on the entry requirements page of the website. There are no written academic requirements for the MA or PGCert.

All Master of Music candidates are automatically considered for Master of Arts, so if you are also interested in MA study you should only apply for MMus because there will only be one audition.

Duos

Established guitar duos are also invited to audition at postgraduate level, performing a programme of three contrasted duo pieces; each member of the duo will also be required to present one solo piece. Each candidate should make their own UCAS Conservatoires application (for the same course code as the other duo member), and then each should email admissions@ram.ac.uk including their UCAS Conservatoires personal ID numbers to confirm that they wish to audition as a duo.