Current Events > What does an orchestra conductor actually do?

(+) Yeah! (+)

All the musicians already know their parts. How does the dude waiving his stick around help anyone?

Helps keep them in tempo with each other.

He's there in case there is any Lightning.

TyVulpine posted...

Helps keep them in tempo with each other.

It's not even just tempo, they use their knowledge of the songs their are conducting to make the piece more dynamic than simply reciting notes off of a page. A good conducter is the difference between a recital, and a performance.

If you haven't been in group music it may be hard to see what they actually do, but they have an impact. From my experience, at least.

A podcast I listen to from time to time is Sticky Notes. It's a show about classical music whose host is a conductor. And one of the things that comes up frequently in his discussions of famous pieces is the vagueness and ambiguity of written music: all the notes are there, but the tempo, the emphasis, these things might only be described using a single word, or if you're lucky a footnote from the composer. On top of that, there are composers infamous for changing their minds about their work after it was published, who put out revisions and new versions and changed the order (or even the number!) of movements in a symphony, for example. The interpretations of these works has shifted over time, and recordings of the same exact piece might carry a different tone or feeling as a result.

Among other things, it is on conductors to make the final decisions as to how a piece is performed, what version of it will be performed.

pretzelcoatl posted...

It's not even just tempo, they use their knowledge of the songs their are conducting to make the piece more dynamic than simply reciting notes off of a page. A good conducter is the difference between a recital, and a performance.

If you haven't been in group music it may be hard to see what they actually do, but they have an impact. From my experience, at least.

Quality post.
This is the real answer.

They also can hear it from a different perspective, so if one section is not loud enough or to loud they can regulate that.

Off Note: But I am watching a Race today, and Ironically the Horse I am interested in is Forte, in the Jim Dandy.

Conductors are equivalent to managers in a capitalist economy, there to babysit the children

SiO4 posted...

Quality post.
This is the real answer.

They also can hear it from a different perspective, so if one section is not loud enough or to loud they can regulate that.

Off Note: But I am watching a Race today, and Ironically the Horse I am interested in is Forte, in the Jim Dandy.

Unfortunately I didn't proof read and it is just riddled with typos.

Don't worry, I'll send Koussevitzky your way.

Farting the whole time.

SiO4 posted...

They also can hear it from a different perspective, so if one section is not loud enough or to loud they can regulate that.

This is an important part of it. Different sections know how loud they are, but they have a difficult time gauging how loud they are relative to the rest of the orchestra. Conductors are, among other things, the feedback monitors of the orchestra.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

no, it's generally an orchestrator who does that

pretzelcoatl posted...

It's not even just tempo, they use their knowledge of the songs their are conducting to make the piece more dynamic than simply reciting notes off of a page. A good conducter is the difference between a recital, and a performance.

If you haven't been in group music it may be hard to see what they actually do, but they have an impact. From my experience, at least.

+1

Their most important role imo is being the leader for rehearsals, you need someone in front of the orchestra who can listen and make adjustments to the performance as needed

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

orchestration is specifically the process of deciding which instrument plays what