How do you conduct an orchestra?

Subscribe to our KZbin channel: sc.mp/2kAfuvJ
Yip Wing-sie, music director of Hong Kong Sinfonietta walked us through the world of an orchestra conductor.

[@Fabricaneg]

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!

[@EdaliaDayCreative]

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.

[@Adventure_fuel]

Also a lot of work is done before the performance

[@kemonogirlpfp985]

Very insightful!

[@Adventure_fuel]

A lot of the work for the conductors is done before the performance

[@vijaydeepchalla838]

Wow Very Nice

[@silviomp]

Beautiful

[@cindyslavik5391]

This was great! However I’ve been to many symphonies and I rarely see anyone in the orchestra look at the conductor? Why is that?

[@noobienoobie6358]

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.

[@cindyslavik5391]

@@noobienoobie6358 Thank You !!!This is very helpful!!

[@CocoGames_0]

They definelty do, in this video you can see many of them give a quick glance, they will have to read the music, regardless of how much they practiced, you can mess up just by playing memory, and you don’t want that in a orchestra. The conductor is not someone that they give all their attention to, they space their attention out from the instrument, reading the music, and seeing what the conductor wants, and also with their other musicians around them.

[@sam2303]

👍👍👍

[@malgorzataszadkowska1599]

I'm more dumfounded than ever!

[@jacobwebster8317]

New world symphony coming in strong!

[@peterallen2904]

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.

[@GBuckne]

..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...

[@notanotherjamesmurphy5574]

where is that @ 0:19 ?

[@User-7597]

It is a really famus music house in Hamburg, Germany called Elbphilharmonie

[@Zman44444]

I just watched Maestro. I came to this immediately because I failed to see and recognize the importance of a conductor.

[@inosukehashibira69]

Anyone know the song they use at 2:14?

[@LingLingWannaBeLah]

Dance of The Knights by Sergei Prokofiev

[@sudarshanarajagopal716]

Anybody know the piece at 1:35?

[@xi6901]

​@@sudarshanarajagopal716 That's Dvorák Symphony No.9

[@greenloafphotosynthesis]

​@@xi6901video? the videos I listen to don't have the trumpets

[@shazuplayz9302]

Second one to comment here, nice!

[@matthewblackwood4704]

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.

[@orewalblack1125]

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.

[@keceti9606]

you clearly have never played in a orchestra

[@ggriglio]

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.