Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello, and welcome back to our fundamentals of music series. I'm Ben Lewis Smith. I work here in London as a conductor of choirs
and orchestras, and I trained at the
University of Oxford, and I want to impart some of the skills that I've
learned over the years, but also some of the challenges that I've
faced along the way. The dark art of conducting is not totally straightforward. I'd stick around for this
one, because at the end, you're going to have
the opportunity to conduct various pieces
of music along with me, and I'm going to
help you improve your technique. I hope
you enjoy the course.
2. The history of conducting: Conducting has got quite
a checkered history. And as ensembles grew in
the 17th and 18th century, there was a requirement
for somebody to be out the front and
conducting time, but also showing the expression, the highs and the lows and music getting faster and slower. Originally, composers would lead from a keyboard instrument, for instance, the
harpsichord at the front. But in the 18th century, orchestras grew and you needed that direction
from the front. One of the most
inspirational conductors, perhaps infamous now, was
called John Baptiste Li. He lived in the 17th century. And in the time before
batons were invented, he used to bash a big stick
on the ground to keep time. I don't know if you can
picture John Baptiste. But unfortunately, he was
having a rather bad day, managed to stab
himself in the foot, which then became gangrenous, and he refused to have
his foot amputated. So, unfortunately, he died. So the first
conductor didn't have a particularly happy ending, but from that point on, conductors tended to use
batons like the stick, you see that I'm holding. So remember Lully and stick with the baton,
I would suggest.
3. Upbeats and downbeats: Now we're going to talk
about possibly one of the most important
elements of conducting, and that is the upbeat
versus the downbeat. Now, for this, I
need a little prop. I hope you can see this. This
is a tennis ball, indeed. Why is the tennis ball yellow? There's your pop quiz question. Well, Sir David Attenborough was absolutely integral in getting a brightly colored ball
on a green background that could be seen when
colored television came about. Why? Therefore, is the bat on
still white? I don't know. Maybe somebody could invent a highly colored baton could be seen in
any circumstances. Anyway, I digress. The important thing
here to demonstrate is the clarity of the downbeat. So I'm going to show
you let me put my bat on down so it doesn't
smash in my pocket. I was once taught by
somebody who actually stabbed themselves through
the hand with a bat on. Again, a risky business. What I'm going to ask you
to do in a second is clap. When I catch the ball. This will demonstrate where
the downbeat is, okay? So I'm gonna throw
the ball up and I want to use clap
when I catch it. Here we go, ready?
Three, two, one. Fantastic. Again. One more time. Brilliant. So hopefully
you're clapping as the ball hits my hands. This is the most integral
thing about conducting. This is the upbeat. S is the downbeat, and your player can see where the bottom of the beat
is helped by the bat on. So, in fact, they could be
reading some music and see over their peripheral vision where that downbeat is coming. Now, the important thing is that there's no
stopping point. If your upbeats doing this, if you're going How can they possibly tell
where the downbeat is? However, if it's all
connected like this, You can see you can anticipate where the bottom of the
beat is going to be. I've got a little
exercise for you. What I'm going to now
Command out of you. Is the word yes. I'd like you to say yes at
the bottom of my downbeat, okay, when you think it is, and I'm going to conduct
it in two different ways. I'm not gonna tell
you how I want it. I'm just going to
demonstrate with the upbeat, how I want you to
say the word yes. So, for instance, I'm going
to give you an upbeat. Yes, and I want you to say yes. Here we go. Ready? Number one. And number two. The two
totally different ways of saying the word, yes. I wonder if you reflect on
that, how are they different? The first one, hopefully, was quite gentle, quite quiet. And then the second one was
explosive and almost shouted. And this is the
importance of the upbeat. It indicates how the players going to play on the next beat. So essentially, conducting is about anticipating what
you want to happen. It's about reading all this
and just being a little bit ahead to create the sound that you want to
create. Well done.
4. Key beat patterns: So as our good friend Lully did, he kept time, and that's what we need to learn as conductors. We need to learn
how to beat time. And we're going to learn four
different beat patterns, starting with two
beats in a bar. So if you have a bat on, that's great. If not, don't worry. Take the in your dominant hand. For me, that's my left,
and we're going to go down out from the body, up. So, one, two. I'm mirroring. I'm showing you with both hands. I wouldn't normally
recommend this, but for the purpose of
today, it's kind of useful. So we're going
down, up, down, up. Excuse me, while I
turn my back to you. I'm going to show
you how it looks to the audience, ready? So we go. Down. Up. Down. Up.
As part of the down, it just goes out
from the body to indicate where that
first beat sits, okay? So we don't just go down up. We go down and out up. So here's our first
piece of music. This is the overture from
the Marriage of Figaro. In the comfort of your own home. If you'd like to join
in, that'd be great. Here we go. The
Marriage of Figaro. O now, our next piece, we're going to learn 34. And this is actually
a piece of Wagner, the tan houser overture. Wonderful piece.
Now, three, four, we go down, we go out,
and we come back up. So we go down, out, up. Down, out. Up. Let me show that
in the right hand. So down, out, up. And from behind, excuse me
for turning my back on you, we go down, out, up. That's 34. So here's
our next piece of music, Wagner's
tan hserOture. Stick, so you get
the idea there. The thing about that slow 34 is that every
beat's got a link up. Remember, when we threw the
ball up at the beginning, then caught it, the
ball is always moving. The same in a very slow tempo. You really want to be
connecting each beat, so there's no sort of stopping. If you're going, stop, stop
the players can't anticipate. So that's two,
four, three, four. Now, four beats in a bar. We go down into the body, out from the body, up. So we go down in, out. Up. I'll show you from
the audience view, so we go down into
the body, out, up. That's our four, four. And our next piece of music
is another bit of mozart. It's the piano concerto in
D minor. So here we go. So that was quite a quick four there and you see that
in that quicker speed, you've really got to
keep the beat moving. That actually requires a sort of another technique which is
sort of raindrop effects. We're going one, two,
three, four, four, two little click on each of those beats to demonstrate
where that is. Now, if you need to
practice the 44 a little bit more slowly, that's
absolutely fine. But then see if you can
get it up to that tempo. Okay, our final beat
pattern we're going to learn today is eight
beats in a bar. Now, this is very similar
to the four beats in a bar, but we add some extra
beats in the middle. So I'll show you. So we go down. Out. In, in, out, out, back to the middle and up. Don't panic. This looks
quite complicated. In the attached PDF document, I'm going to show you how all
these beat patterns look. So I'll show you
very slowly again. So we go down, out in, in, out, out. Up. I'm going to show
you from this side, we're going to go one and two, and three and four. And again, one and two, and three and four. And Now, we're not going to worry about putting that one straight onto a piece of music simply because it's a bit
more complicated. But having a little
practice of that 88, sometimes it can help to think
it's like 44 down in out, up, but each beat is
divided into two. Okay? So those are your four
basic beat patterns, two, four, three, four, four, four, and 88. Well done.
5. Stick technique : To stick or not to stick. That is the question whether
to use a bat on or not. Now, the thing is, if
you've got a big orchestra, if you've got the Berlin
fill in front of you, give me a call 'cause
I'm very jealous. No, if you have the Berlin
fill in front of you, they probably will expect
you to turn up with a stick. And batons come in all
different shapes and sizes. If you remember when Harry goes to I can't remember the
name of the wand shop, but when he goes there
to buy his first wand, it's very similar. You get all these
wonderful batons. It's all about the
weight and all of that. Sometimes you have a
cork handle on the end, which is better for rehearsing and sometimes you have
a sort of wood finish, which is better for an
actual performance. So it really depends
personal choice. The key thing is you'll
lay your arm out, and you want the
baton to be about the length of your
forearm, okay? Um, why do we have a bat on? The purpose is so that players, instrumentalists, right at
the back of the section. So you've got your
first violins here. You've got your ellos there. You've got your
woodwind, your brass. So player right at the back of the hall can see
big white stick. Okay, it's much more
obvious than a hand. But one of the dangers
with the stick is if you start to as
you're conducting, it starts to sort
of move around. It's meant to make
your life easier. I don't know if you've ever
hammered a nail into a wall, but if you try and control
the hammer like that, it doesn't work,
so you need to use the weight of the hammer
to bang the noun. The same with a bat
on. You really got to use it to make your
life a little bit easier. That's actually the
primary reason. It makes your life a
little bit easier. You don't need to do
as bigger gestures. So yeah, practice with a bat on. If you don't have
a bat on, a pencil in rehearsal is just
as good, to be honest. And whether to have it
in your right hand or your left hand depends
your dominant hand. So your beating hand,
for me, it's the left. Your other hand's going
to show expression, which we'll come on to
in a minute diminuendos, crescendos, and more emphasis. So you want to try and keep the transmittable information
of the beat in one hand, whichever hand you decide
that it's going to be. But yeah, the battles
there to aid you. You don't necessarily
need it with a choir, I would suggest, but with a
big orchestra, go for it.
6. Showing dynamics: There's more elements
than just beating time if you stand in front of
your orchestra and you go, two, three, four, you know, they might not come
back for more. And as with everything in our fundamentals of music series, we want you to keep coming back. And that is why we now need to talk a little bit
about expression. Dynamics getting louder,
getting quieter, doing accents, all
these important things that are so integral
to the music. So let's do a crescendo
for four beats, and then a dmuendo. By that, I mean, getting louder, crescendo from the Italian and Dimnuendo getting
quieter, dying away. Okay? So with my beating hand,
I'm going to show you one, two, three, four crescendo,
one, two, three. Four dominuendo one, two, three, four crescendo, one,
two, three, Dominiono. One, two, three, four. There's more elegant and eloquent ways of doing
that, but actually, it's a very nice way
that hand is rising up. You're drawing more sound
out of your players, and then you're dying
away dominueno. A bad habit I got into at university is spraying
the fingers like this. It's not clear at all you want to keep the
fingers together. I think it just gives
you a bit more unity and a little bit
more clarity there. I remember an experience
at university. I was conducting my
first big choir. The Uni Choral Society,
they were called. And one of the altos said,
You're not being clear. Now, for a conductor, it sort of I don't
know about you, but I was immediately I thought, Oh, no, I failed in my quest. And look, performers
all the time will say, You're
not being clear. You know, help me. Try and use it as a positive experience. Try and use it as a
learning experience. What can I do in my
conducting to be better in order that I can guide these musicians
through this performance? If you're in conducting
for the ego and, you know, to improve your
sort of, you know, CV or prestige, good luck, my friends, 'cause it's
a really hard industry. But if you're in the quest for finding great music and continually
improving yourself, then you're in the right place. So just be a little bit careful. One final thing in this segment, I want to show you is
how to do an accent. Remember, I threw the tennis
ball up at the beginning. I caught it. And I said I gave you the upbeat,
and you say, Yes. Well, accents work in a
similar way. It's no good. If I want to do an accent
on beat two in 44, I don't go one. Two. Doesn't well know that. I'd rather accentuate beat one, if I want the second
beat to be stronger. Let me show you one,
two, three, 41. Two. Yeah, so, actually,
the one becomes the impactful upbeat. I
hope that makes sense. So you're always preempting where you want the accent
to be on the next beat. Folks, well done. You're
doing really well.
7. Rehearsal techniques: So in the UK, sometimes conductors of choirs are regarded as a bit
sort of wafty a bit, sort of, you know, a little bit like this, and orchestral conductors are
regarded as very serious and, you know, sort of
conducted like this. The thing is be
true to yourself, to your own personality. There's no point watching
a famous conductor. I mean, I immediately
think of Carian. You see him conducting, and he closes his eyes and he sort of looks down
and he does this. And let's be honest, if you stand up in front of an orchestra these
days and do that, I don't think you'll get
another booking, okay? So you got to be yourself. That's the thing
about conducting. You've got to find your
style of doing it. Yes, within the rudiments
of beat patterns. But you got to be
true to yourself. So let's think about
the differences between different groups. You've got your professionals, your paid players.
They'll come in. They just dropped the kid
off at school, whatever, and they come into the rehearsal 1 minute before, quickly
got the fiddle out. They just want clarity. They want professional and they just want you
to be really clear. Stay calm and, you know, they're not looking for sort of groundbreaking
performance interpretations. The difference with volunteers, amateur players is that they want a little
bit more inspiration. They want you to sell
the music to them. So it's definitely worth being
aware of that distinction, the kind of people that you're
dealing with at the time. I would say that
generally for orchestras, you're going to
have the baton just for that clarity,
especially if you've got, you know, your bassooni
second bassoonist about half a mile down
the orchestral pit. And I suppose one of the other things to consider
if you're doing opera, you're bringing
together the singers and the orchestra, so
you've got both people, and you're the sort
of the conduit, I suppose, for both areas there. So yeah, conducting there's many different approaches to it, but one of the key things, be true to yourself, be inspired by other conductors, but certainly don't just
plainly copy them without considering how to build your own rapport and
your own technique.
8. The psychology of conducting: Psychologically,
conducting can be quite a difficult industry. Remember, you're on your own. You've got your players,
you've got your choir. But actually, for
interpretation, they're looking to
you for resources for guidance and to share the
music is such important work, though, because you have a hand in the
programming of music, so you can, you know, plan things out that
appeal to you and you can share new music
with new audiences. So it is very exciting, but also quite challenging. So here in London, we have a couple of
conductors groups sort of meet up
from time to time. So my advice would be to approach your local
symphony orchestra, choral society right
to the conductor. Go and shadow them and gain
inspiration in that way. You'll probably
find also they'll give you an opportunity to stand up and to conduct their groups. I think also having a mentor, having a teacher is
really key in developing that sort of that strength
and that interpretation. Find somebody that you
trust to have lessons with, to, you know, work on the music. But also, I think
preparation is key. And again, at
university, this is something I fell a
little bit foul of, but marking up your score, we'll come on to this a little
bit in the next segment, but being really clear in
your vision for the piece, there's no point
just standing up and sort of wanting
it all to happen. You've got to go in with
a bit of a vision and really demand it
from your players, not in a rude way, but just demand the
performance that you want. So dum. W.
9. Score preparation: Marking up the score
is so important. You can't go into a
concert rehearsal without knowing how you
want the music to be. So get your score,
get highlighters, get colored pens, and show where each
instrument comes in. Do you remember when we
conducted that marriage of figaro overture a
little bit earlier? There's moments there where the horns come in,
the trumpets come in. It's all very exciting, but
the beginnings really quiet. And you can't possibly be looking at your
score all the time, reading every entry because you want to communicate
with your players. Now, don't be alarmed
with your orchestra if they're playing and they're not seemingly not
looking at you. They're probably on the job,
you know, sight reading. But they'll see the baton over the top of the stand,
so don't panic. But yeah, definitely,
in a choral setting, one of the best
things I learned, you just write sort
of S for sopranos, A for altos, T for
tenors, B for bass. So you know exactly when each
voice part is coming in. And the other thing is
silly as it sounds, when you're practicing at home, lay out your orchestra. You know, you could even
mark up, like, with pages, you know, where your violins
are, where your ellos are, and get used to cuing
in a certain direction. Because it's no good if all of your beat is directly in front, because at one point,
you want to, you know, turn to the violins.
Conduct them. You want to go to your
percussion section, look at them, your cellos, if you want a bit more
of the bass part. So be a bit versatile, be looking around a little
bit and get used to that sensation of conducting
different moments. You might have to get your
cat dressed up as an oboist. I'm not quite sure
how you do that, but, you know, use anything you've
got family members at home. And the other thing, I think
it was Sir Simon Rattle and used to get students together
when he was training, I think, at the Royal
Academy of Music. Used to just say, Look, let's just go play through some Mal. Let's go play through
some Stravinsky. Used to get the score
out the library, and just bash
through it together. Now, sir Simon
Rattle is infamous. He can't even play a
basic scale on the piano, but as a doctor, he's an
inspiration inspirer of people. And that's what it's all
about. Your character, your personality
is so important, but do the groundwork, do that preparation to enable
that to shine through.
10. In conclusion : I've loved putting
this course together, but I have to say, conducting teaching conducting certainly
comes with its challenges. It's not a totally
straightforward subject when you
really think about it. But I hope that you found
something to take away, whether it be the beat patterns, whether it be expressing the
dynamics, the crescendos, the diminuendos,
putting accents in something about the
psychology of conducting or, you know, how you develop your
character as a conductor. I hope you've taken
something from it. I love some feedback. If you have any, you could
leave a review down below. Do make use of those
extra resources, the beat pattern sheet. My intention here was that you leave with a sense that you have the confidence to
stand in front of a group and to be able to deliver some of the things
that we practiced today. The thing about conducting is you don't just
become it overnight, and it's a weird
profession because the only way you learn is by
standing up and doing it. It's all very well
me conducting here in thin air with no
orchestral players, but actually
standing in front of an orchestra, how
they respond to you, how they respond
to your character is a totally, totally
different experience. And people can find they
prepared amazingly at home, and then they get in
front of the orchestra and the nerves get the better. So, the more experience
you can get, as Sir Simon Rattle did, getting his groups of students together and conducting them, the more little opportunities
you can get the better. Just a couple of top tips, I would suggest
that you write to your local symphony orchestra
or choral society here in the UK or chorus
wherever you are in the world and see if you
can go in practice shadow, see how their conductor
works with the Ensemble. The thing is, it's
about actually rehearsal technique as well as looking great in performance. I would also study
conductors from the past. YouTube is a great resource
where you can see, you know, famous historic
performances of symphonies. It's definitely worth
checking that out. But just be careful when you're
using that as a resource, not to blindly copy
other conductors. It's good to, you know, see
how people deliver gestures, but also just be aware
that you're developing your own character
and your own style. I'm so glad that you decided
to take this course, and I hope you'll
stay around for other fundamentals
of music series to be coming to you very soon. Thank you so much.
I'm signing off now. I've been Ben Lewis
Smith, produced by Paul Dempsey. Thank you so much.
Ben Lewis-Smith, Musician
