All-State posting

North Carolina All-State band audition requirements

Rotation-based requirements.

NCBA | All-District

Start with one passage

Check NCBA's All-District requirements for your instrument. Audition date: confirm with your director.

Begin your etude with a short passage. Confirm the official packet with your director.

District chairs notify the All-State chair of eligible students by the end of the district clinic. No public results URL is named.

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Last checked October 6, 2026 | Official source: https://www.ncbandmasters.org/documents

What to work on this week

Use this plan for your next round, a solo, or next season. Not taking another audition? Choose music with your director and use the same steps.

5 minutes - Read before playing. Find the required passage in the official packet. Mark its start and end. Count through a rhythm that needs attention.
10 minutes - Work on one small chunk. Choose a few notes or a short phrase. Play slowly enough to follow the notes and rhythm.
10 minutes - Connect two chunks. Practice the next small section. Then join the sections, paying attention to the connection.
5 minutes - Record and listen. Record the joined passage. Follow the score while listening. Write down one thing to revisit.

This page reports what the official organization posted. Virtunity does not write audition requirements.

Confirm every date and requirement with your director. Organizations update packets.

Back to all states

NCBA

North Carolina Bandmasters Association (NCBA)

2026-27 materials are posted.

Ensembles: All-State Honors Band
Season: 2026-27
Audition window: Directors register February 1-15, 2027, with a $20 fee. Live All-State auditions are March 6, 2027 at Davie County High School, with a March 13, 2027 snow date. The clinic is April 30-May 2, 2027 at UNC-Greensboro. NCBA's honors-band page lists these 2027 dates; its auditions page lists MS Rotation 3 (2026-2027), 9/10 Rotation 2 (2026-2027), and 11/12 Rotation 2 (2026-2027).
Instruments: all band instruments - flute, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, low clarinet, all saxophones, trumpet, F horn, trombone, BC and TC baritone, tuba, plus percussion (snare, mallets, timpani) and string bass

What the organization posted

Rotation-based requirements. For 2026-27 the current sets are Middle School Rotation 3, 9/10 Rotation 2, and 11/12 Rotation 2. Solos are drawn from the Audition Solos catalog at auditionsolos.com, at Level 1 for middle school and Level 2 for the 9/10 division, and each solo carries two endings: Ending A is used for All-District auditions and Ending B for All-State auditions. Scales are published as separate per-instrument PDFs and must be played in the order printed on the page. High school candidates in both 9/10 and 11/12 must be prepared to play any scale either tongued or slurred, with the chromatic scale slurred, except trombone, which plays it legato. Middle school scales are tongued with the chromatic slurred, again excepting trombone legato. Percussion auditions cover a snare solo, a snare technical etude played with an accessory instrument (crash cymbals at middle school, bass drum at 9/10), a mallet solo, and a timpani solo. Sight-reading is scored on the audition sheets alongside the solo, with deductions taken in 0.5 or 1.0 point increments and articulation errors costing 0.5.

Notes

NCBA is the band section of the North Carolina Music Educators Association. A district structure exists: All-District Honors Band auditions feed All-State, which is why every solo carries an A ending for district and a B ending for state. The 2026-27 rotation spreadsheets are at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SfH-S4LKyVJUMYxiKJgdHcgAXzPEnrxCYJ99cEQynvc/edit?usp=sharing (9/10) and https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1y-yNPNOikl4hWXRSLQ6BYcVnNTQUNapFi3WeIcclzSc/edit?usp=sharing (11/12). NCBA lists each instrument's scale count in its scale PDFs; those counts are not summarized here. NCMEA separately runs an All-State Senior Orchestra that winds and percussion can audition for, but its requirements page directs readers to ncorchestra.org; those orchestra requirements are not covered here. Directors are pointed to pages 10-17 of the NCBA Policies and Procedures document for full audition detail. Source: https://www.ncbandmasters.org/honors-band.

Retrieved from the organization's page on October 5, 2026.

AUDITION REQUIREMENTS | NCBA - NC Bandmasters

Practice for NCBA with your audition tempo, tuner and drone on one screen

Virtunity is a practice app built by a band director. Set up each scale and excerpt, then work it up a step at a time.

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Practice now in your browser: free tuner, metronome and drone

How it fits each part of this audition

Scales: Set up each scale in Virtunity and practice it with the metronome at your audition tempo, with the tuner and drone in the same window. Scale Checker confirms scale notes on your iPhone. Notes only. Not tone, rhythm or a complete performance.
Prepared solo: Keep the PDF in your Music Library and set the piece up in practice with the metronome, tuner and your notes beside it. Start under tempo: good reps in a row move the tempo up a step, and Keep lets you stay at the old tempo.
Sight-reading: Sight Reading Sprint in the Lab puts one note at a time on the staff for a 60-second round of fast note reading. It is not a full sight-reading excerpt, so read something new every day too, and keep your counting steady with the Lab's rhythm modules.
Tone and intonation: Every judge listens for these. The tuner shows your note and how sharp or flat it is, and the drone gives you a steady reference pitch for long tones.
Tempo: Tap tempo finds a marked tempo, and subdivision clicks keep your eighths, triplets and sixteenths even.

For students 13 and up. Virtunity helps you prepare. Your playing on audition day earns the chair.