What does a Conductor actually do?
Conductors measurably improve the performance
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If you’ve ever seen an orchestra, choir, or band perform, you’ve probably seen a conductor in action. To the untrained eye, the conductor’s job may seem like glorified stick waving, but he or she is in fact a vital member of the ensemble, whose talent measurably improves the performance.
The most basic role of a conductor is to keep the performers playing together. A musical piece is divided into measures, each with a specified number of beats. Beats are evenly spaced pulses in the music, and the conductor will demonstrate when these beats should occur with hand gestures. These hand gestures may be emphasized with a baton, but many conductors choose to use only their hands, in an effort to provide more expressiveness. While conductors can technically signal beats with whatever gestures they would like, there are some basic patterns that have become standard. For example, if a piece of music has four beats in each measure, *this* pattern is often used. Within this pattern, each beat has an ictus, or a precise moment that signals when the beat should occur. The first beat in the measure, also called the downbeat, is the strongest and most important, so it is signaled with a large downward gesture, with the ictus finally occurring at the bottom of the pattern. In order to make the location of the ictus perfectly clear, the conductor rebounds slightly after each beat. A good conductor ensures that his or her gestures are clear to the ensemble, and conductors who are less visible, like a drum major conducting a marching band, use more rigid conducting patterns to compensate.
All of this technique may seem a bit like overkill. Surely a group of well-trained musicians can play together simply by listening to each other. To a certain extent this is true, and small groups like brass ensembles or barbershop quartets may perform perfectly well without a conductor. However, the larger an ensemble becomes, the more necessary it is for the musicians to have a visual reference for the beat. This is because sound takes time to travel across the ensemble, so if a tuba player is listening to a violinist to determine where the beats in a measure are, the tuba player will be consistently playing too late. With a visual reference for the beat, however, both the tuba player and the violinist play their music in sync, even if it doesn’t sound like it to them. In an orchestra or choir, these sound delays are slight, but can quickly build up over the course of the piece and throw the musicians out of sync. In a marching band, however, players on opposite sides of the field will play nearly a third of a second out of sync if they rely on their ears instead of their eyes. Small ensembles are close enough together that this sound delay is negligible, but they still choose one player as an authority to signal the beginning of the piece and set the tempo or speed of the piece.
Aside from preventing the ensemble from derailing, the conductor is also the authority on the interpretation of the piece. Most stylistic directions in music are left vague, so the conductor will determine whether a phrase should be played more loudly, more delicately, or more sorrowfully. In addition, the piece may contain fermatas, indicating that a note should be held, or caesuras, indicating that the music should briefly pause, and it is the conductor’s job to determine exactly when to resume the piece. These stylistic decisions are communicated either with the conductor’s free hand, or with the style of the conducting pattern itself.
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La. La? ???????
I've been recently introduced to some Orchestra Danish style..thanks for the info!
Nope. The study you linked to (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0035757) DOES NOT indicate that "Conductors measurably improve the performance". It DOES NOT claim to prove that either. All it claims to prove (which I argue it doesn't even prove this) is that the conductors DO have a measurable impact on the orchestra (meaning they move>orchestra acts). There is NOTHING in the study anywhere that says anything about "measurably improving" the performance. And, the study doesn't even show what it claims to show because the methods used could just as easily show that the conductor and orchestra are predicting the same thing, BOTH IN ADVANCE. So there is no evidence that one effects the other and ESPECIALLY no evidence that the performance was "improved measurably".
So, basically: a conductor is a visual metronome!?
thak you, i watched 3 videos before and no one gave me a satisfying answer.. this one did
Orchestral and choral direction are entirely different things.
based, solid, and well made, so much effort put on it, liked and subscribed
Amazing video! Makes much sense now. Thanks very much.
This video was so goood
Why you only have 700 subs is beyond me.
in my orchestra we always say "those who cannot play, conduct"
You explained more in 15 seconds than that pompous prick explained in 5 minutes on vox's channel.
Awesome choices of topic, fantastic explanations in just a few short minutes, adorable and expressive blob illustrations. I wish your channel would keep growing :O
What a load of nonsense! The conductor's work is done during rehearsals. At the performance he is just there to give the audience something interesting to look at.
Ok so he does something useful, I got my answer.
This was so informative and well-explained, and the animations were amazing
I wonder why the channel's owner has stopped uploading videos? I hope they are safe
Cheers from Finland!
to tell the musicians not to mess with the tempo
3:36 the conductor looks so cute I want to hug it
The ghost bloops are very cute :3
That was a great video
Out of all the videos on YouTube including ones where they bring in expert conductors to talk about what it really is, this one is the only one that really tells you what he does. The others are just about the touchy feely stuff. Good job. Very informative video.
So basically he is the equivalent of a personal trainer in the gym. He focuses on counting reps and making sure the workout is effective while you focus on making sure you are doing the exercises correctly.
Wow, this channel is a small slice of lovely in a sea of generic blonde guys doing pranks.
I was always curious about what do these people do thanks
I’m sweaty and I’m crying and I don’t know why
thank you for the great explanation ! i never knew his role was this important and i've wondered about it for years but was too lazy to read about it , this was short, simple and to the point.
The moment you brought up sound wave travel length everything immediately clicked in my head in why a conductor is vital to a large scale performance. I have never even thought of that. It makes total sense.