Eye contact between musicians
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Not quite true, but anyway, what that ignores is that they give the orchestra (and chorus, which was where I was) directions in rehearsal, and the eye and hand gestures during the concert are references to that.
So in rehearsal they stop and point to the horns and say "I want you to crescendo / decrescendo here" and have them do it until good. The horns mark it in their scores.
Then in the concert, the conductor just points, and the horns see the pencil marks on their scores and do it.
The conductor is critical. Sheet music is open to interpretation to an extent - what shade of emotion are you trying to convey; how should the different instruments blend together; how loud is fortissimo for this piece; how fast is fast; at what frequency should we tune, etc, etc. The conductor brings this vision about.
Those are not small delays. The speed of light is slightly faster, so having someone at the front indicating time keeps everything together.
The pointing and gesticulating aren't limited to prepared rehearsal notes. Rehearsal notes certainly happen, but apart from keeping time, the conductor's job is to define the mood and emotional valence, moment to moment. This may be somewhat improvised, within limits.
Orchestras typically play somewhat behind the indicated beat because it allows for more expression.
There's also a lot of business-related admin - dealing with absences, holding auditions for new members, contributing to program scheduling, reading and possibly writing feedback notes to/from various interested parties, and so on.
Every once in a while a smaller orchestra will try to manage without a conductor. While the results are usually workable - professional musicians are very good at their jobs - they're not great.
https://youtu.be/TkFHYODzRTs?t=1094
Everyone in the audience is clapping in time with the beat, _as it reaches them_, and you can see the speed of sound as the beat propagates out through the crowd.
I often use this to illustrate yet another reason that CPUs went multi-core: When propagation across the chip takes longer than your clock speed, you have to reduce the distances somehow. A bunch of small stages in the same acreage would have a much easier time each clapping "together enough".
Amusing factoid: once I was in the audience at a musical theater production, and I could see TV monitors up high on the walls in the house, facing the stage. I couldn't see what was on them, but I'm pretty sure it was the conductor.
So those folks have to be able to see the conductor, too.
AFAIK most bands that play on stage at fast tempos and are not improvising have a synced click going to everyone's IEMs together with their chosen mix of what's coming into the console. That makes musicians able to perform without looking at each other.
When I saw the username I figured it was zoomzoomzoom because Capoeira Mata um, but evidently not.
The crowd hears their own section yell in time to the band and then everything else just kind of seems like an echo of themselves.
To the band on the field, each letter comes back about 3/4 of a beat (375ms) late and much louder than the band itself.
So the conductor is also a visual time keeper.
Orchestras rehearse as little as they do because conductors do everything you've mentioned. But additionally they facilitate a singular musical goal, and take the "democracy" out of it. Further to this is the time management. The musicians in the orchestra have enough notes to play and sound to think of, without having to consider how much rehearsal time we need/want to spend on a specific movement, how we would like to spend more time on movement 1 but actually movement 3 is notoriously tricky so we need to have time for it etc. Also, someone has to be monitoring the process to know when enough is enough, it's not always the case that more rehearsal time = better.
The only hotspot moments were when you were doing solo or standout work, which by necessity would mean that you would be rehearsing your sections with the whole group as, for instance, if a random tenor dropped a note that can be covered by everyone else, but if the soloist does it then it can make the whole ensemble look bad.
Why does the hall size matter? I would have expected the size and shape of the space within the hall that is actually occupied by the orchestra to be what matters.
The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus_Chamber_Orchestra), performing without a conductor since 1972, would like a word. :) They’re definitely not large, but I would strongly dispute the “not great” part. On the other hand, they’re also very unusual in that space—even eight-piece chamber ensembles often have a conductor!
But, having played conducted music (double bass), there's another reason. What seems like a fine tuned machine on stage conceals a lot of chaos, and the orchestra may be barely hanging on by a thread. For one thing, at any performance, probably 5 to 15 % of the musicians are substitutes, due to a variety of circumstances. For some commercial gigs, 100%.
Those subs rarely attend more than one or two rehearsals, and sometimes none if it's an emergency. Of course there's a cadre of musicians who specialize in that kind of work. I do it but in typically in a jazz setting. Still, I've experienced looking at some hastily e-mailed PDF's of bass parts, a day before a performance, and saying to myself: "I'm screwed unless the conductor gets me through this."
We're doing Boheme? No way I'm doing that without a dress rehearsal. Every opera singer screws things up in their own special way and I need to know what to expect.
We're doing anything by Stravinsky? I'll take every rehearsal I can get.
When I played it as concertmaster I felt that it was my duty to ensure that at least one person was hitting all the notes though. Never practiced so much for a concert as that one... and that's why even many years later I feel ready to show up and play it on a moment's notice.
> You have to have the ability to physically manifest your vision of what the music sounds like in your head using just your body, in a way that is so clear and concise that anyone watching immediately knows what you mean. You also have to be able to elicit immediate gut responses from people without them realizing it, like a dog trainer giving a command.
You can play without a conductor. In high school, he had us play Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings without him, because it's such an emotional piece. He wanted us to play off each other, not him. That's the only piece I remember from high school orchestra...
Great composers and conductors also know to play to the strengths of their soloists.
As shown here with Nora the Piano Cat:
I often think it’s funny that we critique what a conductor does with our eyes and miss the entire point of what he’s doing. It’s not our eyes that should be critical, it’s our ears.
I play music as well. Eye contact can be a form of communication when other forms are “busy”. When I look to the other musicians on stage and give them TheLook@ they follow, on cue, in time, to the look.
It’s also completely natural for both the cue person and the recipient. It’s deeper than our conscious brain. I find it fascinating.
There are musical symbols for pretty much every common (and uncommon) instruction, and any gaps are typically filled in with textual notes.
However, conductors are tasked at interpreting the piece, which sometimes they might want a different sound, or perhaps the orchestra has trouble adhering to a tricky bit of notation. Any number of reasons will result in extra added notes jotted down in the scores directly.
Given that sheet music is often pre-printed or otherwise very difficult to edit, this is the next best thing.
In Stanford Symphonic Chorus, Steve Sano began every new piece giving us a set of pencil marks to make in our scores. Nearly always, for a phrase that ends with a quarter note, we'd be told to replace that with an eighth note and an eighth rest. This is his choice, not the composer's.
Eye contact is vital, and doesn't have to be reciprocated back to conductor. Peripheral vision is used a lot for front desk string players, back desk strings follow front desk (it's a hierarchy). There is usually more reciprocation from solo wind and brass players, if only because of their location on stage and their periods of rest (it's nice to have the safety net of a conductor cuing your entry after 53 bars).
There's heaps more, lemme know.
I’ve always wondered whether the pianist queues up tempos and entries by gesturing the conductor or the other way around?
However, sometimes the composition makes this near impossible (i.e. there is a large section of the orchestra that has to start playing in the new tempo, such that a conductor couldn't both react to the tempo of the soloist and show it clearly to the orchestra). If it's impossible for the conductor to get the tempo from the soloist, then usually there is time before the first rehearsal to discussing those spots, and discuss ideal tempos for the soloist. As you can guess, there is usually the possibility of negotiation, either verbal during this meeting, or during performance rehearsal both finding a more ideal tempo for the hall, orchestra, and days sensibilities.
Schumann piano concerto is a decent example. Second movement tempo is totally decided by the pianist, no discussion is necessary prior to rehearsal (unless they want some particularly abnormal). The second theme of the second movement is with solo piano in accompaniment position. So while we want to accommodate their musical needs, ultimately the musical burden is on the orchestra (in this case the cellos), as a result the tempo will be mostly decided (contextually of course, it has to fit with the first theme) by the conductor. Third movement beginning in theory is lead into by the conductor, however after the downbeat the soloist can show their tempo and the conductor responds.
what parameters would one search for?
majority of my videos are actually unlisted
Thank you!
Also, it turns out that the pay for classical musicians is horrendous and almost anything to do with performing arts is a terrible career choice (even before COVID).
I, for one, am grateful that there are those who make that terrible career choice.
Probably a separate skill set, I'm sure a good studio musician knows how to do great with headphones on their head. I'm a bass player myself but rarely do any recording so I'm crap at it but I'm sure I could learn.
Mostly just the drummers, but other musicians too.
Or literaly one creature with two arms and two legs, playing bass, drums, piano and guitar at the same time, see http://rochus-keller.ch/?p=1153
So, if you're asking why we're discussing one-man-bands in a "thread about visual coordination between musicians," that question falls to you, since you were the one who started the sidetracked conversation, which turned out to be a self-aggrandizing advertisement. Yet, now you're gaslighting and trying to make it sound like I did something wrong when, in fact, you were the one who both sidetracked the thread and then confrontationally declared a musician wasn't a real musician, thereby turning it into a "values debate" -- despite obviously meeting all of your requirements for "real" musicianship, since you're both quite literally using identical methods and technologies.
The video visibly shows him playing all of the instruments and not using a sequencer, which betrays that you still haven't actually watched the video.
I completely got the point, which is why my original comment was extremely relevant to the conversation of a one-man operation -- a conversation that you acknowledge starting. You then, however, claimed that it doesn't make sense for me to post a video about a one-man drummer-bassist in a conversation about a one-man drummer-bassist, in a bizarre attempt to make it seem like I somehow antagonized you. What you're doing is called gaslighting, in its purest and most disturbing form.
> I don't see any connection between your video and the ones I posted.
The methods used by both drummers in both videos are literally identical in every conceivable way. They are using the same technology. It's a MIDI controller going into a computer which triggers samples, which is also the exact same method you are using and describing in your original comment and blog post. They are identical. And even knowing that, you are still shamefully attempting to publicly disparage another musician and claim they are lesser than you -- even going so far as to claim they are a "DJ" despite performing in the exact same way that you are. It's beyond outrageous.
In pop/rock/funk/blues/jazz/country/folk/metal/everything, it's common for a band's instructions to be "sit on this 2-bar vamp until i give a signal". And that signal needs eye contact to acknowledge the receipt.
I'm now imagining the conductor in the middle of a Bach concerto calling out "Take me to the bridge" and pointing to the 1st trumpet player for a solo.
If you watch the video https://youtu.be/FEwnhjItTSs?t=477 from 7m57s you can see them all start to signal to each other to get ready and then 20 seconds later it happens.
A gentle "slap on knee" while sitting can signal to the other person that you're ready to leave the conversation.
Starring elsewhere while listening can be a sign of "thinking" or "distraction" depending on how your eyes are moving.
In a text-dominant world, where all of these contextual cues are lacking, we tend to interpret people's messages in the most negative way possible. (Snapchat solves this w/ images, teens abuse emojis to solve this, voice msg are becoming more of a thing)
I do think we can incorporate a large chunk of these contextual cues digitally to make digital interactions smoother! Even without VR.
Video calls are additionally worse, the extra input is almost pure noise and cannot even help you read the room to show if a person is distracted when their "listen attentively", "glance on their watch" and "just do something else entirely" are exactly the same. I find it much easier to distinguish with pure audio and no distractions.
Having to use video for work makes me feel as if I was in webcam business, though I admit it is useful in more sensitive meetings where you want to visually confirm participants.
Eye contact is very important in small ensembles especially when there isn't a director to synchronize breathing and cues with other voices or instruments who share your part, though in a lot of cases you can go by ear just listening to the other parts.
In this setting, when there is a director their basic role in a performance is to keep the tempo regular and direct rallentando and accelerando, and to remind you of cues, dynamics, and other things they might've discussed during rehearsals. During rehearsals their role is also to set the mood of a piece of music and get everybody to match it, because obviously if all the musicians have a different idea of how it should sound and feel it's not gonna be a very good performance, and in a concert they can reinforce that mood through body language.
In larger choir or orchestra's the director's role to keep the tempo becomes extremely important because you just can't rely on what you hear from the section that's sitting on the other side of the church or of the concert hall; by the time the sound gets to your ears there'll be a few ms of delay and you'll already be primed for starting late, so you have to maintain eye contact or have a "leader" in your section who will do it and to whom you'll refer for cues.
1 meter adds 3ms (2.85ms to be precise and that's standing dry air)
https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/14600/how-do-jazz-...
Pop is a different field. Bands are more manageable because the individuals all have separate lines and are supposed to be listening to each other. Which is how blind musicians like Stevie Wonder signal changes through their playing rather than through eye contact.
In an orchestra you have entire sections of somewhere-between-6-and-24-more-or-less people all trying to play the same lines while facing in the same direction, while another section plays something else next to them and/or behind them.
Keeping everyone together is a harder problem.
Yes and no. I agree that it's very difficult for classical musicians who are completely blind, but there are talented musicians who are legally blind and make use of assistive technology. I know an oboist who plays very well in orchestra despite only being able to see two or three bars of sheet music at a time.
Bands are more manageable because the individuals all have separate lines and are supposed to be listening to each other.
I think the issue is the other way around really. Yes, the musicians in a band all have separate lines, but it's all very coherent -- a melody and some harmony. In symphonic music you might have 24 violinists all playing the same notes, but that's the easy part -- the hard part (and where you really need a conductor) is when one melody is bouncing between the 1st and 2nd violins (with supporting harmonies in the lower strings) while a counter melody is being played by the clarinets and French horns and the trumpets are furiously counting 57 bars of rest before they interrupt in 3/4 time.
There might also be some unexplored areas in this article, with regards to the role of eye contact in /improv/, especially jazz improv and the like. There's a lot more communication that occurs both through instruments and non-verbal cues in that setting.
When I've played keyboard in a group setting, I've noticed I'll use eye contact to let someone know that we're feeling out-of-sync - perhaps in tempo, for less experienced groups, or to mark a chord transition or harmonic opportunity they're missing, or to encourage them to push a bit more in a section where they're withdrawing too much.
But really, why isn't this article talking about the most important sense of all w/r/t music... HEARING????
All the eye contact in the world isn't going to fix violin I not being able to hear that they are sharp to the cello.
Is this true? Even as an amateur musician I find I'm able to play effectively without looking at my instrument. I know professional musicians who often close their eyes while playing.
Or did you mean looking at other musicians' hands and limbs?
But for timing, visual cues usually takes priority. That's why in chamber music they usually do that deep, exaggerated breath in the beginning, to synchronize the start.