What does a Conductor actually do?
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- Опубликовано: 1 фев 2018
- Conductors measurably improve the performance
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www.npr.org/sections/deceptiv...
If you’ve ever seen an orchestra, choir, or band perform, you’ve probably seen a conductor in action. To the untrained eye, the conductor’s job may seem like glorified stick waving, but he or she is in fact a vital member of the ensemble, whose talent measurably improves the performance.
The most basic role of a conductor is to keep the performers playing together. A musical piece is divided into measures, each with a specified number of beats. Beats are evenly spaced pulses in the music, and the conductor will demonstrate when these beats should occur with hand gestures. These hand gestures may be emphasized with a baton, but many conductors choose to use only their hands, in an effort to provide more expressiveness. While conductors can technically signal beats with whatever gestures they would like, there are some basic patterns that have become standard. For example, if a piece of music has four beats in each measure, this pattern is often used. Within this pattern, each beat has an ictus, or a precise moment that signals when the beat should occur. The first beat in the measure, also called the downbeat, is the strongest and most important, so it is signaled with a large downward gesture, with the ictus finally occurring at the bottom of the pattern. In order to make the location of the ictus perfectly clear, the conductor rebounds slightly after each beat. A good conductor ensures that his or her gestures are clear to the ensemble, and conductors who are less visible, like a drum major conducting a marching band, use more rigid conducting patterns to compensate.
All of this technique may seem a bit like overkill. Surely a group of well-trained musicians can play together simply by listening to each other. To a certain extent this is true, and small groups like brass ensembles or barbershop quartets may perform perfectly well without a conductor. However, the larger an ensemble becomes, the more necessary it is for the musicians to have a visual reference for the beat. This is because sound takes time to travel across the ensemble, so if a tuba player is listening to a violinist to determine where the beats in a measure are, the tuba player will be consistently playing too late. With a visual reference for the beat, however, both the tuba player and the violinist play their music in sync, even if it doesn’t sound like it to them. In an orchestra or choir, these sound delays are slight, but can quickly build up over the course of the piece and throw the musicians out of sync. In a marching band, however, players on opposite sides of the field will play nearly a third of a second out of sync if they rely on their ears instead of their eyes. Small ensembles are close enough together that this sound delay is negligible, but they still choose one player as an authority to signal the beginning of the piece and set the tempo or speed of the piece.
Aside from preventing the ensemble from derailing, the conductor is also the authority on the interpretation of the piece. Most stylistic directions in music are left vague, so the conductor will determine whether a phrase should be played more loudly, more delicately, or more sorrowfully. In addition, the piece may contain fermatas, indicating that a note should be held, or caesuras, indicating that the music should briefly pause, and it is the conductor’s job to determine exactly when to resume the piece. These stylistic decisions are communicated either with the conductor’s free hand, or with the style of the conducting pattern itself.
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i am now educated
haha, I like this comment :D funny
Not educated enough to start a sentence with a capital letter apparently
@@tetlamed not educated enough to reply with a sentence fragment apparently
thak you, i watched 3 videos before and no one gave me a satisfying answer.. this one did
same :D other videos assumed you know a lot about music to begin with
Guys I have some questions regarding conducting. Would anyone be willing to answer them for me?
So, basically: a conductor is a visual metronome!?
A conductor is more like a sound engineer who doesn't have a mixing console nor a studio. He does the arrangements and controls the execution live.
Are u a conductor? If yes, can you answer a few of my questions if thats okay with u?
Rest in peace this RUclips channel
Hi, just wanted to say that this was very entertaining and educational. I hope you keep posting: you definitely have a talent for explaining complex subjects.
This was her last video
Guys is anyone here a conductor? I have a few questions I want you to answer if that's okay with you
Out of all the videos on RUclips including ones where they bring in expert conductors to talk about what it really is, this one is the only one that really tells you what he does. The others are just about the touchy feely stuff. Good job. Very informative video.
Amazing video! Makes much sense now. Thanks very much.
Fantastic explanation and artwork!
thank you for the great explanation ! i never knew his role was this important and i've wondered about it for years but was too lazy to read about it , this was short, simple and to the point.
based, solid, and well made, so much effort put on it, liked and subscribed
Awesome choices of topic, fantastic explanations in just a few short minutes, adorable and expressive blob illustrations. I wish your channel would keep growing :O
The moment you brought up sound wave travel length everything immediately clicked in my head in why a conductor is vital to a large scale performance. I have never even thought of that. It makes total sense.
I've been recently introduced to some Orchestra Danish style..thanks for the info!
This was so informative and well-explained, and the animations were amazing
I wonder why the channel's owner has stopped uploading videos? I hope they are safe
Cheers from Finland!
Can I ask you a few questions about conducting if that's okay with you?
it probably just wasn’t as successful as they were hoping. Though, I imagine if they had just kept going they would have reached great success eventually. It’s a shame
This video was so goood
Why you only have 700 subs is beyond me.
More videos please!
Very cute animation
really good job
Why do you not have more subscribers?Great video
That was a great video
thank you
Ok so he does something useful, I got my answer.
to tell the musicians not to mess with the tempo
I was always curious about what do these people do thanks
Sounds like a Conductor does in a certain way a similar job as a mixing engineer. Alignment of different tracks, adjusting the levels, layering the sounds etc etc
I hope you didnt stop the production of your very informative and wonderful shorts? I love watching them :)
I’m sweaty and I’m crying and I don’t know why
You must market your channel
So basically he is the equivalent of a personal trainer in the gym. He focuses on counting reps and making sure the workout is effective while you focus on making sure you are doing the exercises correctly.
slow it down a litle bit
Oh no, what happened to this channel? Thanks for the videos.
The more I know
Orchestral and choral direction are entirely different things.
La. La? ???????
Huh?
in my orchestra we always say "those who cannot play, conduct"
I already knew the answer but the quality of this video was too much for me not to check out
Nope. The study you linked to (journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0035757) DOES NOT indicate that "Conductors measurably improve the performance". It DOES NOT claim to prove that either. All it claims to prove (which I argue it doesn't even prove this) is that the conductors DO have a measurable impact on the orchestra (meaning they move>orchestra acts). There is NOTHING in the study anywhere that says anything about "measurably improving" the performance. And, the study doesn't even show what it claims to show because the methods used could just as easily show that the conductor and orchestra are predicting the same thing, BOTH IN ADVANCE. So there is no evidence that one effects the other and ESPECIALLY no evidence that the performance was "improved measurably".
You still haven't responded to this.
Wow, this channel is a small slice of lovely in a sea of generic blonde guys doing pranks.
What a load of nonsense! The conductor's work is done during rehearsals. At the performance he is just there to give the audience something interesting to look at.