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Comment by ranko | Hacker News Reader

Gender blinding in orchestral auditions (which usually involves screening the performers from sight and thus is pretty-much foolproof) has been shown to improve the percentage of women who are hired.

See, for example, 'Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians', Claudia Goldin, Cecilia Rouse: http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903

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That's interesting, I would have thought being able to see actual finger movements to analyze mechanics is a part of the evaluation process. Could be totally off base though I suppose.

Good mechanics are a given at that level of performance. If you can play like Yo-Yo Ma with bad mechanics, more power to you, an orchestra is not going to care.

If anything, I would imagine it's like the old story about drafting athletes. Given two equally successful point guards, you draft the one with crappy technique because he has more room to grow.

If you're hiring for some mid-level orchestra, bad mechanics on a sufficiently-skilled player might be enticing. And as you say, bad mechanics among top performers are basically nonexistent.

That'd be interesting, but once you reach an orchestra you're generally beyond technical training. Players are expected to know how to play; individual training is rare and focuses on style aspects more than technical things.

True enough; I had that in mind when I said mid-level, but even at that point I imagine individual training is largely over.

Perhaps a better example would be a teacher identifying the most promising school/college-age musicians?

Why would they care how you play as long as you sound better than everyone else? You're auditioning to make music for them, not to be their student.

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