It always feels strange once the orchestra stops playing annd its the composer that bows for the applause.
- It’s like a semaphore type thing, the position of the baton shows where the beat is, and the conductor can signal other things as well like “emphasis here” or “quieter” with body language. An orchestra where everyone does their own thing wouldn’t sound very good.
- It’s hard to get up and bow with certain instruments, there might not be space, and you couldn’t see past the first row very well anyway. I always assumed the bow by the conductor was on behalf of everyone.
how does it work? do specific baton flicks mean specific things? is he just shaking it around to the beat?
They do actually! For a 4/4 beat (4 beats per measure and the quarter note gets the beat, meaning 4 quarter notes per measure), they will move the baton straight down for 1 (the “down beat”), left (usually) for 2, right for 3, and up for 4. Different time signatures will have more or less movements, such as 3/4 time (3 beats per measure) will be down (1), left (2), and up (3).
Further, there are other movements like a wide slash left to right is a stop motion for everyone to instantly stop playing.
Yeah you pick it up fairly quickly if you play any conducted music. Especially because a lot of the gestures make a lot of sense. The beats are a pattern with beats to them and the common signatures you get a feel for. But like it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if the conductor is doing a rising motion at your section you should be playing louder and if it’s increasingly frantic you should be increasingly loud until the hands either come together in a beat (loud finishing note) or they’re separated in a way that will either signal to hold or to fade, or they’ll just start doing a lowering motion to tell you to start piping down. It’s all meant to be very intuitive
Yup, there’s a specific pattern for each time signature, and if you get really lost you can tell where in the measure you should be by them.
The patterns for cursed time signatures are equally cursed.
Setting the tempo and keeping the instruments all synchronised
I feel this video of Jacob Collier conducting an orchestra from scratch may be the best representation of what conductors do.
Drying it off.
Funny thing is you can actually conduct pretty well with just your hand.
Also a good conductor is usually an astoundingly good player of multiple instruments themselves.
It’s kind of like how football (soccer) team managers are retired players that can still play better than the entire stadium wearing loafers and a suit.
Conductor, we have a problem.
It is all about direction and control of sound.
I just recently attended to the Opera “The magic flute/Die Zauberflöte” so reading the replies here gave me a lot of answeres to questions I was to lazy to ask for myself.
Anyway, have soneone else here seen that play?
They wear VR contacts and are tapping little people on the “screen” to make the noises.
Orchestra conductor weighing in here. This is the correct answer.
Keeping the music out of their eyes
It is the conductor.
I didn’t know orchestras had trains.
You’ve never heard of the Trans Siberian
RailroadOrchestra?Now I just want to listen to an orchestra play on a train.
I dunno, that sounds like a fast track to being the subject of a murder mystery. I think I’m good.
As long as the train doesn’t go through any tunnels, or the lights go out briefly, you should be fine!
Oh there’s lots of trans people in orchestra
Is that where you switch from playing trombone to trumpet?
TBF sometimes the conductor is the original composer. Just obviously not usually, at least if it’s a very successful piece or they’re dead.
They’re kind of a live mixing engineer, it’s really hard to coordinate a piece between more than about 6 others without a conductor to give feedback, cues, and tend to the overall sound (tone, dynamics, rhythm).
Yeah when you’re playing an instrument in a symphony you have a very, very narrow ability to hear and understand everything that’s going on. Your own instrument is (usually) in your face, you might be in a section with a bunch of the same or similar instruments that is drowning stuff out, everyone is facing away from you and the acoustic echo is weird, etc.
Conductor stands right in the middle of it all and can actually hear everything. A conductor can guide entire sections, or even easily pick out a specific player and get them to be louder, quieter, slow down, etc.
Each player in the symphony is paying attention to that person and they all take cues from them. It’s pretty wild.
Players are playing instruments. Conductor is playing the players.
This explains is pretty well:
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20141029-what-do-conductors-actually-do
This is rage bait
