Subscribe to our RU-vid channel: sc.mp/2kAfuvJ Yip Wing-sie, music director of Hong Kong Sinfonietta walked us through the world of an orchestra conductor.
As someone who is looking into this for a later sprint in life, this was really interesting and informative because I can read sheet music but I never looked into how that all fits with conductors. Always assumed it was far less structured and more heavy on knowing your artists after tons of practice. Then, simply, methodically gesturing them towards the right and complete sound for the orchestra. Thank you!
brilliant explanation of the gestures and whats involved. i loved the added animations as well. very helpful. i’m playing a conductor in a play and came here to learn to look like i know what i’m doing.
Thank you, for this video. It helped me out a ton. I was mirroring a conductor today whilst attemtping to learn how to properly hold a baton, and I notic'd that he was using the basic down, left, right, up, sequence and this video makes it 10x clearer. I'm assuming the piece had 4 beats.
Thank you for this explanation, I really enjoyed it because I always wonder. I love jazz and hearing the beautiful arrangements from the orchestra. In my heart the two biggest accomplishments in your life is either getting the opportunity to sing in front of or conducting/leading a full orchestra. There’s no bigger honor and respect because what it takes to do it. My fantasy dream career would to lead an orchestra. I can’t imagine how it must feel to conduct an orchestra on the worldest highest stage at like Carnegie Hall. Jazz musicians get my highest respect
Most of the time it’s something you subconsciously pay attention to after you have played a while. I do not sit that far in the back, but from my experience you see the conductor very well. In some circumstances it would be very necessary for you to get your head up. This might be in places where you or your instrument group needs to play very/more quietly (often the acoustics of where you do your rehearsals are very different from the ones in concert halls, so different instruments might be louder or quieter) or if there are other things that the conductor wants to communicate, which might be done with eye contact or pointing. Often the conductor will talk to and plan with a player or an instrument group if he thinks that communication is needed for a specific place in the piece. I hope I did a decent job at explaining.
Take a look at the aurora orchestra. They can play mainly without a conductor. But then…..so can most orchestras. The correct term is musical director.
..with all of these videos on conducting I've only seen one to tell you HOW MANY BEATS IS THE CONDUCTOR AHEAD, so far on a comment some one said 1 to 2 beats...
I don't believe they are needed for anything other than when to start playing and volume control. They don't even every look at the conductor just their sheet music.
A conductor is pretty useless when an orchestra is playing simple pieces where the pulse is regular and defined such as baroque or classical music. Also you would unlikely have a conductor for a chamber orchestra and almost never for a small ensemble. To participate in the conductorless orchestra, players must learn the score beyond their individual part to successfully create a unified sound. This kind of orchestral experience allows all members of an ensemble, from the concertmaster to the musicians sitting in the last row to be active participants.
This is a bit of a black-and-white answer, where a performance is everything but. A piece of music has so much more than a start and stop and some volume changes, and a conductor can influence many aspects of a performance. What you are describing is a glorified metronome. That is something the orchestra certainly does not need.
