Why Being a Conductor is The Hardest Job Ever 

Conductors are the loneliest members of an orchestra. The musicians won’t even glance at them.

Twoset: “I didn’t hear where they messed up.” Me (non-musician): Finally, I can relate.”

"Oh, and what instrument do you play?" "The orchestra."

As a pianist who has little experience playing in orchestra, and spends most of my time solo practicing, these clips terrify me.

Brett: "conductors are delicate people" Me, my mind full of traumatic flashbacks from my band director yelling at & roasting everyone: …are you sure?

- Conductors are delicate pe- - *YOU HAVE NO EARS, NO EYES*

The Da-gu-da-dum part on the triangle...this just shows how much of a perfectionist Bernstein was. Here is where they fail. Attempt 1: the rhythm is not clear enough. It sounds too slurred. Attempt: 2 the rhythm is clear, but the sound is too aggressive. That's why he says "that's a little better". Attempt #3: rushing a tiny bit and sounds flat. Their sound production is just not right. Attempt #4 he does the same thing, just in a slightly different spot on the triangle. Hence - "doorbell". A very simple instrument, but not simple to play at all! Not a specialist, but it probably has to do with the angle at which you hold the stick, how much you let it vibrate in your hand when hitting the triangle, how many milliseconds you linger on each hit, how strong you make each stroke (there probably should be a little bit of a crescendo). As I said, not a specialist...but I have seen some great percussionists play the triangle and the thing starts to sing and dance in certain hands!

5:22 that conductor was the freakin boss for resetting that situation so quickly and under such total control. I think a lot of people would have just tried to continue on and hope for the players to get in sync. But he was like nah screw this. Tap tap tap. And one....

brett: conductors are delicate people toscanini roasting his orcestra: eeeeeeeaaaa contrabassi!!!1!! your ears are in your feet!!!! *sounds of italian anger*

Yesterday: "violins are delicate instruments" Today: "conductors are delicate people"

Can we all petition Apple to make Maestro Bernstein’s “DAGADADUM” an official alert/text tone for iPhone?

Once in my high school band somehow we collectively skipped a measure. We had been playing it well for a month or so but practically everyone, including the conductor just randomly skipped this one measure and kept playing as if nothing happened. There were one or two people who were confused but most of us just did it instinctually - it only happened one and it remains a great mystery :)

2:36 He says viola with such passion that it kinda sounds like it's part of the performance, like it's a play and a character is calling out to someone named "Viola."

I was in a state honors choir once and our choir as a whole was NOT following the conductor. Cue the best teaching allegory I have ever heard from any conductor ever. “Imagine you’re on a desert island. You haven’t eaten for days. You’re starving. All of a sudden, out in the distance, you see a Hershey’s bar. It’s shining in the light. You run towards it, hoping and praying it’s real. You grab it, and you can’t believe your luck. You bite into it, and the chocolate is real. It melts on your tongue. The chocolate is so sweet. It’s the best thing you’ve ever eaten in your life. Folks, I am that chocolate bar! Look at me like I am that chocolate bar.” He was black. Our choir had no issues after that 😂

Viola in orchestra = Alto in choir. It's always the Alto 😔

I will never forget how stupefied I was once in youth symphony orchestra when our new conductor stopped and said "you on the fourth stand in the second violin on the left, you played a wrong note in bar xyz that f sharp was out of tune" (or something similar). He didn't mean me, but I'm sure my mouth was hanging open because I'd always been sure I could hide behind the others when I happened to play a wrong note. No more! And how the hell did he hear who exactly made the mistake among the 20+ violins playing?! 😳

When i was a kid i thought conductors were random old guys who really liked dancing so they got a nice little stick and did it with a bunch of fun people making fun noises in the background

Eddy as a conductor: Moving passionately with the music and has a lot of facial expressions. Brett as a conductor: Dead pan face with minimal gestures.

I'm not even a musician but man, these conductors scares me.

5:29 just SEND me omg my hands drenched in cold sweat, I felt that in my soul

Ling Ling doesn’t need a conductor The conductor needs Ling Ling

Maybe we've been mishearing Asian mothers all this time: "When you get older you become conDUCTOR lah!"

5:32 Nerves of steel of the conductor. We fucked up, let's just chill and start back, we got this guys.

The one you skipped that yelled "1-2-3" was weird al yankovic. How dare you!!! Hahaha

Conductor: calls the viola section All of the violinists: laugh at me because I'm the concertmaster and yet my name's Viola Me: *internal screaming*

conductor: "it has to be da-ga-da-dum!" percussionist: *plays da-ga-da-dum* conductor: "no, it's not da-ga-da-dum, it has to be da-ga-da-dum!" percussionist: *visible confusion*

2:37 . The musical equivalent of " where is the lamb sauce"

I have been watching many livestreams since Covid lockdowns started. The number of senior, professional conductors who count, sing, mutter and generally make noises during livestreams is absolutely astonishing.

EDDY JUST CASUALLY ROASTING THE PERCUSSION LIKE "as a triangle player, you're probably not used to having such high expectations placed on your part."

The conductor: "That sounds like a doorbell" The entire orchestra: Ooof

"as a triangle player you're probably not used to having such high expectations on your part" Eddy 2020

Before i started playing music, i always thought that conductors were never needed and that they just waved a stick around doing nothing. Now dat i hv started playing music, i realised that conductors are everything when it comes to playing in a group together with a big audience.

My teacher, when I haven’t practiced: “It’s worse. Well, congratulations ”

TwoSet: "conducting is hard" My mom: "these old guys just wiggle their arms, of course it's easy pffff"

Ah yes, triangle. The smallest and yet still included part on orchestra. Which reminds me of Amazing World of Gumball where Gumball nailed the triangle part...and everyone is dissapointed.

I feel so bad for thinking that the conductor is useless, from watching twoset I have learned that the conductor basically carry the whole team

I've been a percussionist in a few amateur orchestras, and triangle has ALWAYS been the highest expectation on sound design. Everyone outside of musicians tend to make jokes about the triangle being easy to play (because it's "just tapping a metal triangle you see") but it's extremely hard to play precise rhythms with it, I have found. Doing that one rhythm, alone, is somewhat feasible, but to coordinate with your triangle-mate to be precise enough? a nightmare.

conductor: *does super coordinated and complicated hand movements that bring everyone together while looking at the singer* people in the audience: *does 3/4 counting and pretends to conduct* haha this is so easy

5:36 this is a representation of second hand embarrassment on full potential

In the clip with Kleiber, it's a bit hard to hear because it's a bootleg video. But it's pretty clear that the orchestra just went on autopilot when Kurt Moll (the bass) finishes his phrase. In that moment, the singers onstage are quite slow and the orchestra doesn't react at all. Kleiber is on it immediately showing a crazy clear cutoff on 4 with a fresh downbeat to adjust the orchestra's timing to the stage but they are nowhere to be found (granted his new downbeat is late to the stage but in these emergency situations, these split second gestures can save the day even if they aren't perfect). Kleiber took things very personally as always, hence the stab to the heart. But it's true that the orchestra completely dropped the ball in that moment. And any opera conductor worth their salt knows you can't fix the stage but you can adjust the orchestra. Thanks for all the great videos!

I love my orchestra conductors so much. They are always so into the music, like with their whole hearts. They don't hesitate to roast us if we're bad, but it's not in that scary and angry way. Like for instance when we played a piece by Wilhelm Stenhammar one of them said: "I'm glad Stenhammar is dead, so that he can't hear you play right now. He would've been so sad."

Conductors have the hardest job. They have the longest solo... It lasts the whole concert and usually is where all crowd's eyes end up.

my heart is hurting for those percussionists omg there's just not much more you can do for that triangle part lmao. as a percussionist, can tell u our part always goes SO downhill when we're stressed LOL

yuja's stare at 4:11 .. she was ready for MURDER

WHY BEING A TWOSET FAN IS THE HARDEST EVER: You prevent us from practising! Just kidding. We love you, guys!

As a middle school teacher, I've just felt a spiritual connection to those conductors. Trying to guide a bunch of very different people who have very different ideas of why the heck they're in a group doing the thing, which thing we're doing, and why there's somebody at front getting increasingly frustrated... lord have mercy on us.

8:36 Leonard BURNstein!

Talking about the section by section and then the “no” after KILLS ME. The ANXIETY knowing eventually he’ll get to you but you’re section isn’t ready omg

A friend of mine is a conductor and his broke his knee while conducting. The passion.

it’s even scarier when a conductor you respect asks you to play alone because you don’t want to disappoint them

First clip is Carlos Kleiber, a usually very friendly and calm conductor who was famous for his cooperation with orchestras even though he never stuck with a particular one. Quite a perfectionist from what I've heard. You can watch rehearsals with him and you see what a nice and funny person he was.

8:23 the only time I’ve seen Bernstein struggle at ANYTHING

My favourite quote from a conductor: "This is not a democracy!"

As a percussionist, I can tell you those guys weren't playing the part right. They should have played it on the inside, one-handed, and with great force; the alternative hand should have been dampening the notes so that they were more staccato. They could have also played the phrase on the widest parts of the triangle so that the notes traveled less. Either way, they were playing it too legato. Ringing the notes over each other. I'll tell you one thing though; when a percussionist doesn't know what they are doing wrong, they'll never play it right. It's happened to me, I know the feeling of starting to sweat and just simply not know what to do.

This brought back traumatic memories of playing once in high school band... during one concert, the band's tempo got so out of sync that the conductor had to cut us off and restart from a measure in the middle of the piece. He tried to keep it cool, but we all were ready to pee our pants because we knew we were in such deep trouble for not watching him to keep tempo. To this day, the look on his face as he gave us the second "downbeat" for the piece is burned into my memory lol

Conductor: VIOLA... VIOLA... VIOLA... 😡

*The violas weren’t playing bad, he just wanted them to be heard more in the rehearsal ^^

i thought all it took to be a conductor is to have delocalised electrons

can't believe they skipped over my mans Weird Al Yankovic like that

Fast forward to 2021 where twoset tries conducting the youth orchestra XD

When the conductor starts to sing when conducting...there might be something wrong. When the conductor suddenly tapped to stop the orchestra...then there is something wrong.

So you were talking about "red alert" conductor gestures -- here's one, and it has nothing to do with the music. In high school I was in the orchestra pit for Kiss Me Kate. It has a lot of showbizzy play-in-a-play humor. At one point Harrison Howell crashes a rehearsal by driving his truck onto the stage through the outdoor backstage access, and stop a bit short of the orchestra pit. The actor driving wasn't sure how far forward the front wheels were and didn't know where to stop. The conductor made increasingly panicked "STOP" motions and signed the cross while us musicians dove for cover under the apron's supports. THAT was a red fuckin alert D:

Don't mess with Yuja Wang and her Mendelssohn's piano concerto or a giant viola will tear your homes to pieces. Seriously, the second movement of that concert is incredible.

Being a conductor myself, with over 5 years of experience, I relate to this video a lot. I make mistakes too, but that's okay. I was always taught that if you mess up, try to fix yourself in the next bar when possible. Very funny video, and I agree that conducting is a very tough and very serious job, even though I only do it as a hobby. :)

We know this was recorded a while ago because of Brett’s glasses

My favorite conductor quote...when rehearsing Norina’s aria with the orchestra the conductor slams his baton down and screams,”No No No !!!” (At this moment I am thinking, “ God, I hope that is not about me.”) he turns to the violins and screams, “ If she can sing all those damned notes, why can’t you play them!!?” Lol!!

The triangle part gives me nightmares. When you have a conductor that's never played percussion it's hard to translate what they are saying to what can be done

I started to be amaze of the conductor job when I saw all the hard effort and lot of hours Chiaki (Nodame Cantabile Anime) put into making a orquestra sound decent, learning the partitude by memory of every instruments, understanding the melody, musicality and even the creator and their background, it really was amazing to see all that.

Twoset: “Watch the conductor guys..” Also Twoset: who watches the conductor anyways?

Brett and Eddy: Does Tik Tok move at the start Me: doesn’t have tiktok Also me: More time to practice though ((:

That clip at 5:24 I've literally had happen to me when I was the Baritone in my first ever B Minor Mass. We didn't reset and honestly it made it so difficult to refocus and sing after that because I had so much second hand embarassment. Love y'all so much who can pull that Oboe duet off well!

I have always wanted to be a conductor. And now that u know the hard parts of being one, it makes my dream bigger. Thank you!

It's not just hard to be a conductor. It's even difficult to become one. At the beginning of your career you're being too soft or too hard and you end up being eaten by an orchestra.

“I’m not a triangle specialist but that sounds like a doorbell”

One of my favourite conductors was Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Absolutely minimal hand movements, fantastic music. It just proves that it's all in the rehearsals and the orchestra's respect for the man. A player in one of the London orchestras said he just made you want to play your best for him.

In the clip with Yuja Wang, it is Kurt Masur conducting and singing. I mean he was the chief conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra the New York Philharmonics and the London Symphony Orchestra for nearly four decades, so he knew what he was doing, but he was also feared for calling out musicians and their mistakes, even in concert. Also pointing at them in front of the audience. In this case, he might have even forgotten about being in concert, because he was in his 80s and already in a weak state of health. But most probably, he was just unsatisfied with the execution of the cello section, trying to "show" them his intended speed by singing along. After all, there are several conductors out there, sometimes singing or at least huming along without realizing.

The "di-gi-da-dum" thing reminds me of when I was playing Beethoven's 7th 1st movement in youth orchestra. There is a motor rhythm basically the entire movement and the conductor pointed out that we could never keep it as it was - it would always morph into something else. I went to bed every night after rehearsal with that rhythm in my head. I bet those triangle players went to bed thinking "DI-GI-DA-DUM" all night XD

I can't imagine how it feels when the conductor said "No it sounds like a doorbell"… I feel so sorry for those percussionists…

5:12 Weird Al Yankovic?

Man, these reminds me of all those times in our own youth orchestra. There was one time our conductor got so fed up with us that during the run off concert our maestro just started stomping to get us in time. And the amount of times he's made us restart, it's amazing.

I didn't realize how hard conducting was until I played in an orchestra for someone's conducting recital and the sound that the student drew from us versus the sound that her instructor drew from us was completely different. Newfound respect for conductors after that...

Conductor at 5:24 it's the priest Jesus Segade from my country (Argentina), and the piece is Messe in B minor from Bach, and they're playing in one of the most important cathedrals in the country (Lujan). He's mostly known cause he arranged the choir section of the Misa Criolla (you must listen to it).

My middle school orchestra conductor once stopped us in the middle of a concert and has us "start again from measure 120" because the first violins were 2 bars ahead of the rest of the orchestra. Most embarrassing concert moment of my life

That last one gave me so much anxiety. "Idk what you need to but do it" like yeah ok

8:33 “I’m not a [triangle] specialist” is a classic line when you’re a passive aggressive conductor.

imagine a deaf conductor using sign language but his orchestra thinks he's conducting

i love that they put the viola concerto in the background while they are talking about the viola hahahahah

My Uncle used to play for the LSO when he started his career as a violinist. The conductor at that time was Sir Georg Solti. Now, sadly my Uncle had a passion for raw garlic and would easily consume a head of garlic a day. He decided to indulge before rehearsal one day and they weren't too long into it when Solti stopped the orchestra and screamed: 'Who's been eating garlic? Someone's been eating garlic!'. My Uncle raised his bow timidly and apparently Solti lost his charts and threw him out, telling him to not return until he'd gotten rid of the smell. Needless to say, he didn't do that again 🤣

I'm a conductor of my choir group. One day there was one of the singers who told me "Ugh, it's so tiring to sing again and again. Not like you, I know you aren't tired because you just move your hand" And I was like "shut the f*ck up, bruh you don't know anything"

When the last conductor just gave up on the triangles, I, just watching over here can have the courage to laugh. However, if I were in that orchestra, I would't be laughing at their mistakes. The look from the conductor terrifies me when they couldn't get the sound he wanted. I would be thinking "what if it's my turn or my section?"

As a violist this made me cry laugh. I was the principle and my section was so terrible, the last stand was reading comics (the joy of junior orchestra). I used to yell out measure numbers sometimes because they were so lost. Good times. The conductor would make us go stand by stand and after us it would just break down.

I’d love to see a musical theatre version of the communication between singers and the pit because. I’ve seen some stuff

I love watching Eddy get extreme secondhand embarrassment over the orchestra messing up 😂

4:03 Eddy: is this a live performance with... live people...? *I SHOULD HOPE THEY'RE ALIVE*

I'm not even a musician nor play in an orchestra but this stress me out somehow

I just luv these two bright and wonderful young musicians,, So much to learn from them,,

As a percussion player for about 6yrs it's pretty damn hard to get the dikididam sound on that big size of triangle. And they should hit the triangle at the vertices not the sides it will get a shorter and higher sound, but actually the triangle is pretty hard to get that sound, even the conductor don't know how, so yeah just saying

when you’re too early and there are no meme comments

7:17 Cute frog

One of the things I've learned from running a mini-choir, and from someone I know who recently started conducting an amateur orchestra, is how much time and effort is spent outside rehersal organizing music. Picking music to learn, picking out songs for each sunday, running it past the pastor, rearranging music for your group, checking you aren't infringing copyright by accident because the laws are confusing, printing off parts because someone has lost theirs, figuring out what you're short of, and making sure you bring your music and the spares to rehersal etc etc. In addition to making sure everyone knows practice times and changes to schedules, and all important parts of the loop know what's going on, learning to play the accompaniment on the harp and to sing all the verses and so on. There's a lot to running a group of musicians. And I'm just running a tiny church choir mostly singing in unison, not conducting. The person with the orchestra has a much more complex job than I do. They spend so much time eyebrows-deep in music composition software rearranging parts for the unusual instrumentation they've got, listening to youtube videos of the piece with the score in front of them, and generally learning it inside out, backwards and forwards. And so many more people to wrangle, and money and practice space stuff to worry about that I don't have to deal with as a church group. Wrangling music and people is a huge, time-consuming, and almost-invisible part of the job.