audition tips?

Question:

How do you read music/ tips on singing/ audition tips?

I'm in the general chorus and about to audition for a harder and better chorus. I really want to get in, but I'm scared to death about auditioning in front of the whole chorus and my friends (et all) so tips on auditioning in the first place would be helpful. I also would like singing tips-sometimes my voice strains when I sing even normal notes for my (?) alto section. Plus, I'm very rusty on reading music, so tips on symbols and especially counting rhythms and beats and time signatures, help would all that would be GREATLY!! appreciated. I would really like to get in easily, even though only about 1/3 of the people who audition get in. Please help! Thank you for your time and (hopefully) your great answers!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: One of the most important things to remember when sight-reading is rhythm. If there's a scarry time signature, such as 7.5/64 (not that I've ever seen anything like that; Sorabji didn't write choral music anyhow), you can pretty much ignore it and count the same way. That one would mean that there are seven and a half beats in a measure, and that a sixty-fourth note gets ont count, so there are seven and a half sixty-fourth notes per measure. You probably won't see anything other than 4/4, 3/4, 2/4 or 2/2. C stands for common time; 4/4. The C with a line through it is read exactly the same way as common, even though it means cut time. So, when you count, there's a little word you can assign every beat;
If there are quarter notes, count it as one, two, three four...
Eighth notes; One and two and three and four and...
Sixteenth notes; One-ie and-a two-ie and-a...
If you get a three on two (which is three notes in one beat instead of, say, two eighth notes), think of the beat pattern One, two-and three. The 'and' there would be where the eighth note would fall if there were two notes instead of three.

As for actuall notes. Practice singing major and minor scales and arpeggios, which are going up and down the chords one note and a time. Make sure you can distinctly sing a half step and a whole step. It wouldn't hurt to practice other intervals too, you're likley to see a fifth, which is the strongest and most basic cadence. You could really have some fun and sing in tritones, which is the most dissonant interval. A C to an F# is a tritone, and so is any progression with the same distance between notes. So, if you're singing classical like mozart of vivaldi, make sure to get down the fifth, the half-step and the whole step. If it's jazz, learn the jazz scales and sing in minor thirds, whole steps and tritones. Good luck!