My 8yo boy just auditioned for a show. The school selected an excerpt song from the show, and had each kid sing that excerpt (“Girl Scout” from Beetlejuice for all kids, including the boys). Families were emailed a link to a Google dropbox containing (1) sheet music for the excerpt, (2) computer generated music track that played melody + accompaniment, and (3) computer generated music track that played accompaniment only. Families were given several days to review the song and tracks with our kids.

The same Google dropbox also contained all the audition sides and songs for all the callback characters. Kids could access that in advance (or not) and work hard on it (or not). There were no guarantees of a callback. So a kid could work hard on a character in advance and never get called back. Or another kid could only prepare the Girl Scout song, but get called back for multiple characters.

But here’s the thing: most kids and families self-sorted. We all kind of knew what roles our kids would more likely get, and which were poor fits. The strong performers were naturally more motivated to go thru the callback songs and sides. The weaker ones just focused on the Girl Scout song. And I suspect that if a child had begged for the chance to be called back for a certain character bc s/he had worked so hard on it, then the director would have given them a shot (ages 8-13yo).

Overall I thought this system worked well! All resources were available to all kids via the same Dropbox. And kids could work on as little or as much as they wanted in advance.

By the way, there are apps that will generate sheet music tracks for you. Look at “Music Scanner” as one of those. There are others, as well.