get anything out of a conductor?

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this is directed towards the classical musicians and band geeks among us, of course.


i get hardly anything out of watching a conductor. the tempo, obviously, and i know that if he has his hands very far apart, it means play loud, and if they are close together, play quiet. i can see these things out of the corner of my eye while looking at my music, so i see no need to look directly at them (this has gotten me in trouble in school, of course).

i assume that the conductor is conveying all sorts of information about phrasing and such via body language (otherwise, i see no purpose to having one in front of a professional orchestra, the members of which are presumably capable of keeping time by themselves). but i don't get anything like that out of watching.

thoughts? similar experiances?

The only thing I would add from my band geek days (forty years ago) would be him cuing in the sections at the right time. Of course, most of us would just be sitting them counting beats until it was our turn, but still....

i forgot cuing... probably because honestly, i can't see why they do it. i mean, it says when to come in on the part. i think it's an ego thing- it must be very satisfying to wave your arm and get a beatiful sound in response.

I thought the conductor just set the tempo. Depends how many beats to a measure there are in a piece, but when the stylus or stick goes down that's the first beat of the measure or the downbeat. The downbeat is supposed to be accented to set it apart. Like ONE two three four, ONE two three four, if there are four beats to a measure. I've just read a few chapters of a music fundamentals textbook, so that is all I know about one thing a conductor does. There's probably more, but that's all I know.

The vasts majority of the time, they're just fleshy metronomes. There are occasions though, where they can shoot an intense look that'll wake a group up and sort of "rally the troops" to a climax.

what orchestra are you with, and what do you play? i didn't know there were any pro muso's on this board.

i used to play principal clarinet with the local youth symphony in high school. it was loads of fun, but i wouldn't consider it as a career option... i've got the bass clarinet chops to make a low-to-mid-level professional group (or so my teacher claims), but couldn't cut it on Bb/A clarinets, and i wouldn't really enjoy it even if i did, since being an orchestral bc player is about 90% counting rests, 5% Bb , 4% oom-pahs, and 1% fun. . playing first chair was fun, though, even though the group was terrible.

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so we've agreed, the primary purpose of a conductor is to run rehearsals, and to indicate tempo changes that might trainwreck if left to the group. which means, basically, that there is no need to do anything but watch through peripherals.