Comment by tunesmith | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tunesmith | Hacker News Reader

(I was expecting an article about electricity.)

Having done a little of both, I found it easier to write for full orchestra than to conduct one. Conducting is extremely hard. Just the simple practice of conducting ahead of the beat (where you're motioning beat 1 while they're still, roughly, on beat 4) is a bit of a brain bender. The first time I tried to conduct a student orchestra, that alone was enough to make the tempo get slower and slower over time, as I kept trying to correct to their beat while they would in turn correct to mine. Add on to that all the emotive requirements - you need to be a special kind of extravert to take to conducting naturally, I think.

At any rate, conductors are essential to the rehearsal process, as they're responsible for the interpretation, which is rehearsed. By the time performance comes around, the conductor is less essential, serving a more of a coach that gives cues, triggers, and reminders about the shape and interpretation that the ensemble has worked up.

I sometimes operate media servers that deliver video for several classical pops concerts including Fantasia and a number of more modern Hollywood type movies. The conductor gets a special synchronized video feed with white dots flashing to indicate tempo, colored lines to show when changes are coming up and bar numbers, all superimposed over the movie. The conductor has to speed up and slow down the orchestra in order to match the music exactly (or as close as possible) to the original video. I never change the speed of the video. Some pieces seem to be harder and also require a click track. These are shows that obviously require very close attention to the conductor.

I always wonder if all the orchestra was given a click and a copy of the modified video, if the conductor could just sit down and eat a sandwich. Of course, that is kind of like contrasting watching a DJ that selects mp3 tracks vs someone who can adeptly spin vinyl.

Curiously, I can tell you from listening to the conductors speak candidly, they often consider this sort of conducting much harder despite these added tools. Even when they are playing very familiar pieces like the music from Fantasia, it is very difficult to match it so exactly to the original. They compare adjusting the speed of an orchestra to speeding or slowing a freight train.

With professional orchestras, most only do 1-2 rehearsals before the shows I control video. It is amazing how fast the musicians take notes and adapt to the direction of the conductor. There is almost always a marked improvement between 1st and 2nd rehearsal and the actual show.

I will say that having stood at the conductor's podium at many of the top theaters in the U.S. (while empty) - it is an incredibly intimidating thought. Every seat points straight at you. It is much more singularly focused than a dramatic stage. It definitely has given me (someone with very little musical understanding) a great deal of respect for their responsibilities.

I always wonder if all the orchestra was given a click and a copy of the modified video, if the conductor could just sit down and eat a sandwich.

Got to try a rehearsal like this with my high school band (Sorcerer's Apprentice, IIRC). There was still enough other information to get from the director (adjusting dynamics, etc.) that we probably would have sounded bad with just the video.

they often consider this sort of conducting much harder despite these added tools

I'm not sure it's an added tool so much as a more exacting spec.

Mixing MP3s is no less of an art than mixing vinils...

I am sure that is true (I don't have a music background). I just think it is usually much more interesting to watch someone perform with vinyl. More showmanship or something.

> With professional orchestras, most only do 1-2 rehearsals before the shows I control video. It is amazing how fast the musicians take notes and adapt to the direction of the conductor. There is almost always a marked improvement between 1st and 2nd rehearsal and the actual show.

Orchestral musician train and practice a lot, across a wide variety of music types, and as such their sight reading abilities tend to be very good. When it comes to a performance piece they'll have been practicing it solo for a while before they even set foot on the stage, so they'll already know both the piece, the flow, and their role in it. Adapting to the conductors direction really should be just a couple of rehearsal task for them :)

> Of course, that is kind of like contrasting watching a DJ that selects mp3 tracks vs someone who can adeptly spin vinyl.

The selection process is the same. But there are various 'cheats' mp3 DJs can use which vinyl DJs can't whilst mixing. A lot of MP3 mixing hardware now comes with auto-beatmatch functionality. I see this being used quite a bit. It tends to sound pretty soulless, because there's no 'liveness' to it, it's very mechanical. Another is looping the bars at the end of a track to make it easier to mix, with vinyl if you run out of time you just get silence!

Still, the main thing is playing the right music in the right order, if you can make it from one track to another without f*cking up then you'll have 95% of the room on your side. The other 5% will the trainspotters that take everything far too seriously anyway.

That's how I remember it from high school - by the time the performance comes around you can play the piece without looking at the conductor.

I've heard that many pro orchestra/conductor combos only have one or two rehearsals, maybe the night before and day of the performance. In that case I could imagine it takes a lot of skill on both the conductor and musicians part to pull off the performance.

I found it interesting to hear that conductors didn't play a huge role until after Beethoven. The older I get the more I feel that post-Beethoven symphonic music is a little over the top and often hard to enjoy. Maybe the need for a conductor is a sign that things simply got out of hand. I do enjoy a good Strauss or Verdi opera, though, and that's even crazier in terms of complexity.

Isn't that a natural progression in many fields though? Developing ever more complex and challenging material to show off you're "better" than the previous generation or "building upon their work" so to speak? Regardless of whether the added complexity is much of an improvement.

It kind of makes sense that you start needing a conductor - it is basically dividing the growing complexity into lower and higher level tasks because the full task is too much to bear for a single individual.

SnakeDoc: You have been hellbanned, apparently due to your comments on nuclear missile silos.

Often times, in the standard repertoire, the conductor doesn't necessarily do anything in the performance. It is in the preparation, when the conductor disseminates their interpretation to the ensemble, where their artistic vision is forged.

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