All-State posting

South Dakota All-State band audition requirements

Live, closed auditions (adjudicator and student only; no recording devices, no directors or parents in the room).

SDHSAA | All-State Band audition

Start with one passage

Check SDHSAA's All-State Band audition requirements for your instrument. Audition date: confirm with your director.

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

Plan with Virtunity

First month free for eligible new subscribers.

Available on iPhone. The browser version is in early testing.

Last checked October 6, 2026 | Official source: https://sdhsaa.com/Handbook/ACT-AllStateBand.pdf

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

SDHSAA

South Dakota High School Activities Association (SDHSAA)

2026-27 materials are posted.

The full requirements were not readable from a public official source.

Ensembles: All-State Band
Season: 2026-27
Audition window: Audition Entry Forms due electronically no later than December 15, 2026 (late additions accepted 3 days past, $25 fee each). Live auditions are held at assigned audition centers Wednesday-Monday of NFHS week 28. All-State Band rehearsals April 1-3, 2027 and concert April 3, 2027 at Jefferson High School, Sioux Falls.
Instruments: winds, percussion, string bass, and piano

What the organization posted

Live, closed auditions (adjudicator and student only; no recording devices, no directors or parents in the room). Each wind and string bass candidate performs: one major scale, one minor scale, and a chromatic scale (specific scales assigned per instrument and sent to directors); a self-selected solo of 90 to 120 seconds with each excerpt at least 30 seconds long, which may not be a solo used in any previous high school All-State Band audition; 8 to 10 measures of sight-reading; and an 8 to 10 measure prepared etude from the SDHSAA five-year etude rotation. The rotation etudes are drawn from named published sources with assigned page, measures, and tempo, for example Voxman Selected Studies (Rubank) for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, trombone and euphonium, Ferling 48 Famous Studies for bassoon, Kopprasch Etudes Op. 5 for bass trombone, Blazhevich 70 Studies Vol. I for tuba, Pottag/Southern 335 Selected Studies Book I for horn, Bille New Method for string bass and Czerny Op. 139 for piano. Percussion perform rudiments in place of some scale material plus snare, timpani and mallet etudes posted in the SDHSAA Bound area. If weather forces a change, auditions convert to single-take unedited mp4 video submissions with a PDF of the solo (measures numbered, excerpts marked), and the live sight-reading is replaced by a Quickly Prepared Etude released by SDHSAA.

Notes

SDHSAA does not state which of the five rotation years applies to 2026-27; its handbook says the existing rotation continues, so confirm the year with your director. SDHSAA links the Audition Etudes, Audition Scales, Percussion Rudiments and Sight-Reading PDFs at https://sdhsaa.com/activity/all-state-band/. Run jointly with the South Dakota Bandmasters Association. SDMEA (sdmea.net) separately runs Middle School All-State Band, a different posting.

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

SDHSAA Handbook - All-State Band

Practice for SDHSAA 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.

Scan with your iPhone to get Virtunity

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 etudes and 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.