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Watching: How to Get Us to Watch You! |
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Conducting);" Publication, Spring 2017 |
- It's hard to connect to other members of the orchestra if you don't feel like you can look up and connect to them through the conductor.
- Lead by example always. If you are not inspired in your work, neither will the students be
- Watch Us. Make eye contact with us. Even when you're not cuing us in. Eye contact and direction trains us to look up, to trust and acknowledge your direction and to respond.
- Conductors who tell us to watch sometimes do it because things are going badly. They don't know how to fix it, so they blame us. I hate that.
- Conductors who tell us to watch sometimes do it because things are going badly. They don't know how to fix it, so they blame us. I hate that.
- Get it into our minds earlier on that we need to watch you. Throw in a game of "change the tempo;" it can help you see who is watching or not and it can keep your students on their toes. It can also be seen as rather annoying though so don't use it too often. Give eye contact and a good down beat.
- Breathe with the orchestra and breathe before starting to show the tempo. Make appropriate facial expressions.
- BEAT ONE!!!! (sorry I have a conductor with really sloppy beats and it drives me crazy).
- Direct eye contact never hurts. Get your nose out of the score. If you need to look down for every second of each piece, you shouldn't be leading the group.
- Facial expressions are key to getting us to watch. The conductor needs to make it look important for us to look up and although many think this means get bigger, it really helps when it is the opposite and the conductor begins to conduct smaller beat patterns.
- Look like you want the music to sound. If you want it really, really loud, I don't want to see you looking like you're bored. If you don't "look loud" we won't play loud.
- Exaggerate and emphasize the beats you want students to pay particular attention to.
- Many times we, musicians, don't trust ourselves... which leads us to look down. Practicing watching the conductor is the most important part. Let's practice how we want to perform.
- "Turn the stands around, you know the notes" repetitive exercises, ways to build watching the conductor into a habit like watching mirrors while driving
- Encourage students to memorize music or play passages without the music. Or conduct unpredictably to startle people into watching.
- Be small with as little motion as possible. The more you flail the less I will be interested in your interpretation because it will not be clear. Don't show me how to play, give me room to play.
- Be reliable - if there's a measure that's a little wacky, tell us what you'll do to make it as clear as possible and stick to it!
- Watching is so important, but it really clicked for me when I learned how to listen. When I learned that listening to intonation, articulation, togetherness, and sound quality was the most important thing in a collaborative setting, I understood the reason for watching. When closing your eyes and listening to the orchestra of sounds around you, you understand the purpose of the conductor and how the orchestra can work more efficiently by watching in addition to listening.
- Don't just tell us to look, be sure that we understand why it is worth it to do so. Also, it is important that we feel comfortable with taking this risk.
- Make yourself interesting to watch, or make it a game when starting with very young musicians. My director had one student whose eyes were glued to his music the entire time. He would hold up random objects during the piece, then whenever he would stop, my director would call on the student and ask what he held up. The student could not tell him, but by the end of the year the student could name every item anytime my director held something up. This also got the attention of the other students.
